


The Unmaking

by angelfishofthelord



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 15, Angels, Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Castiel Makes a Deal with The Shadow (Supernatural), Castiel and Dean Winchester Use Their Words, Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Castiel-centric (Supernatural), Chuck Shurley is Castiel's Parent, Dean Winchester Uses Actual Words, Domesticity in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt Jack Kline, Hurt/Comfort, Jack Kline is a Winchester, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Original Character(s), POV Multiple, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Season/Series 15, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Sort Of, Team Free Will (Supernatural), Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), The Empty (Supernatural), Whump, and a terrible one at that, because GROWTH, he gets whumped a lot in this story and i'm sorry but those i love best must suffer most, i might add more tags later but i dont want to spoil it, lots of headcanon about angels and heaven, sam and cas are a dynamic duo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:21:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27345748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelfishofthelord/pseuds/angelfishofthelord
Summary: Sam looked up, the plastic pieces falling from his hand in a splash of blue. “Cas? What’s wrong?”“Angel radio,” he gasped, bowing himself forward. His eyes scrunched shut, his body pitching forward slightly as his other hand reached up to dig into the side of his head. “It's a distress call. They’re saying…”His back arched abruptly, flinging him upright as his eyes burst wide in a flare of blue and he opened his mouth in a scream.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel & Jack Kline, Castiel & Jack Kline & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Castiel & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 82
Kudos: 257





	1. how do you tell an angel that you don't believe in God

**Author's Note:**

> Foreword: This story is set in s15 but canon divergent. The story happens sometime after S15E15 but before E16. 
> 
> Other canon divergent details to keep in mind: Jack doesn't know about Billie's plan to turn him into a bomb. He hasn't been told about the third trial yet. 
> 
> This is my first multi-chapter fic and my first time to write all four characters of TFW. There will be multiple POVs, likely switching each chapter. I had the whole plot planned out BEFORE e17 aired so any resemblance to that episode or subsequent episodes is merely proof of my oracle abilities.
> 
> Also I chose to write all major relationships as platonic in this fic but feel free to set your sails and ship whatever pairing you prefer. There's plenty of subtext if you're looking for it and plenty of friendship if you're not. 
> 
> Big hugs to my real-life angel who beta read this for me, [alpacamybags](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacamybags/pseuds/alpacamybags)

Tiny knotted lines darted across Jack’s furrowed brow. His hand squeezed tighter in a fist, his dark eyes scrutinizing the map of heavy black marks in front of him. A steady thrum rose in his chest, pulsing to his fingertips. A tremor nudged at his chin, but he bit down on his lip to keep it from building. 

Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his hand and brought it down.

Castiel flinched. The chair squealed in surprise as he pushed back and watched the small blue piece slide into place.

Jack relaxed his jaw into a triumphant smile. “I got all the pieces in.”

“You did,” Castiel frowned at the offending plastic green checker pieces on his side of the board. “Again.” He poked a finger at the rounded top of one of the pieces still in the middle of the black-lined hexagon. “You may be right about blue being your lucky color.”

The green checker piece wobbled from side to side before toppling over with a spin.

“You can try taking a turn with the blue pieces this time,” Jack offered, picking up the fallen pieces and rearranging them inside their respective triangle corners. Above them the rattle of the bunker door opening echoed through the room and the two looked up to see Sam and Dean coming down the metal staircase, duffel bags swung loosely over their shoulders.

“Everything alright?” Castiel asked, rising from his seat.

“Yep. Just a good ol’ salt and burn.” Dean shrugged. “What about you guys, did Billie drop by for any updates on trial numero tres?”

“Not yet.” Jack hopped off his chair and peered at the second bag Dean dropped on the table. “What’s in there?”

“Stopped by for a grocery run on the way back, who’s hungry for burgers and--” he pulled out a squishy package of greens “-- pre-washed rabbit food?”

“Alfalfa sprouts,” Sam said, leaning over Jack’s shoulder to look at the checkers board. “You should always try to get the ones in the back out first, Cas,” he began, motioning at the scattering of green pieces stranded too far from home. “Otherwise you don’t have any pieces to jump over.”

“I got all my pieces in first,” Jack announced as he caught the bag of Twizzlers Dean tossed to him.

Sam shook his head, hair falling over his face in a flutter as he sank down into the chair beside him. “Come on, Cas, do a rematch with me. Jack can help Dean with dinner.” He feigned rolling up his sleeves with a grin before leaning over conspiratorially. “I’ll even let you use the blue pieces.”

Dean stole a red stick from the fistful of Twizzlers Jack was munching through and waved it warningly. “Don’t let Sammy trick you into letting your guard down, he’s brutal at checkers. Used to hide the blue pieces under the motel mattresses just to keep me from winning.”

Castiel tilted his head to the side, eyebrows dipped in confusion. “How did you know about the luck that this color--” he stopped, one hand flying to press against his temple and the other gripping the back of the chair.

Sam looked up, the plastic pieces falling from his hand in a splash of blue. “Cas? What’s wrong?”

“Angel radio,” he gasped, bowing himself forward. His eyes scrunched shut, his body pitching forward slightly as his other hand reached up to dig into the side of his head. Sam jumped up, his eyes catching Dean and Jack moving closer as well, as if to steady the angel.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked, reaching out a hand tentatively.

“A distress call.” His fingers buried deeper into his forehead and he doubled over almost in half. “They’re saying…” his back arched abruptly, flinging him upright as his eyes burst wide in a flare of blue and he opened his mouth in a scream.

Lightbulbs cried and flung their shredded bodies to the ground as darkness exploded through the room, retreating and expanding with every ricochet of sound. Lighting bolts of static pounded through the air and Sam was dimly aware of his legs buckling before he felt the wetness of blood gurgling down his earlobes.

_Cas._

The name numbed his lips and he struggled to stand before another angelic scream rippled through the room. Alarms flashed angrily, bleeding through the piercing din. Sam grabbed hold of the nearby table leg to steady himself as his vision dissipated to a speckled blur. He caught sight of the shape of Dean crawling on the floor, one hand cupped to his ear and the other stammering towards the outline of Castiel. 

The angel stood there, a phantom swallowed by the crashing flickers of shadow and light. His eyes burned blue as he screamed again, a sound jagged with agony and pulled from the shutters of his chest. Above him Sam heard the glass surface of the table splinter with a howl as the entire room quivered under the blast of unending celestial sound waves.

A flash of brown shifted at his right and Sam watched Jack hurtle past him, wrestling against the next deafening blast to reach where Castiel now lay writhing on the floor.

Then the screaming stopped.

A shower of shards slipped off Sam’s shoulders as he pulled himself up. Across the room Dean was stumbling off towards the switchboard at the back to turn off the alarms that were still screeching red. Sam put a finger to the trickle of blood that now ran from his ear to the base of his neck. “Cas? Jack?” His voice floated away from him and he couldn’t move his hand fast enough to grab it back.

“Here.” He felt rather than heard the word as Dean grabbed his elbow and guided him forward. The weight of Dean leaning on his shoulder told him that his brother was also just regaining the feeling of solid gravity in his legs. Together they shuffled around the broken table and overturned chairs to the corner of the room where Jack sat with his back against the wall and forehead pressed into Castiel’s shoulder.

“Cas?” Sam felt the word now. Sharp. Stinging.

Castiel knelt there on his knees, surrounded by a flattened halo of crushed glass. His face was bowed low and buried in his hands but a low keening sound escaped the clasped fingers, a steady mumble of Enochian. Every few seconds his body jolted with a tremor that washed through him.

“Jack? What happened? Is he hurt?” Sam could hear Dean asking the questions even as they moved a few steps closer and Sam realized there wasn’t a drop of blood on the angel. But Castiel was still shaking so hard Sam could almost hear the rattle of the air around him. Closer now, and Sam could hear him clearly. He realized that Castiel wasn’t physically injured.

He was weeping.

The Enochian continued to rush out, falling between the broken sobs. Sam could understand a word here or there but not enough to piece together what was being said. _Prgel._ Fire. _Saisch._ Brothers. But there was one word repeated over and over, a mantra holding the torrent of anguish together. Sam understood the word well enough not to need any other context. Again and again the word choked on the cracks in Castiel’s voice, slipping through his fingers. 

_Iehusoz._ Mercy. 

_“Cas….”_ Sam started, his tongue suddenly swollen and heavy. He staggered forward, legs folding suddenly and Dean shifted his weight to hold him upright. 

Jack looked up, his eyes shining bright and terrified. “Chuck,” he breathed. “He’s in Heaven.”

The sound of Castiel weeping faded as bile, sour and sharp, rose in Sam’s throat, long before Jack even finished his sentence. “He’s killing the angels.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's some headcanon here about Jack not being able to hear angel radio and that he understands Enochian.
> 
> All Enochian was taken from this [dictionary](https://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/enoch1.txt).
> 
> Chapter title from ["Angel"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zItz1WDch70) by Justin Furstenfeld


	2. do not speak as loud as my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean had no idea how long they had sat on the floor beside Castiel as he sobbed and prayed in Enochian before he finally went silent, shrinking against the wall, blue eyes still as frozen rain. They had helped him to his feet and brought him to his room where he resumed a statuesque position seated on the edge of his bed, facing the wall with rigid stubbornness.  
>    
> “Please leave,” was the only thing Castiel had said in response to constant questions if he was alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this next chapter the night before s15e18 airs because the best way to prepare for heartbreaking pain is with more pain. 
> 
> Enjoy the angst.

Dean saw Sam’s reflection in the half-drunk bottle in front of him before he approached. The bottom of the whiskey bottle straddled the wide chasm in the shattered table, amber coloring the fine dust coating the surface. “Did you finally get the kid to calm down?” he asked, without looking up.

“Yeah, Jack’s in his room.” Sam slid into the chair across from him and reached out a hand. For a moment Dean thought he was going to snatch the bottle away with another patented speech about needing clear heads to come up with _what-to-do-next_ plans, but instead his brother pulled up an empty glass in his other hand and tipped the bottle towards it. Dean listened to the gurgle of whisky filling the glass, sounding too loud and too giddy, like a child laughing at a funeral. His ears were still buzzing from the screams that had died out an hour ago. Or had it been more? He had no idea how long they had sat on the floor beside Castiel as he sobbed and prayed in Enochian before he finally went silent, shrinking against the wall, blue eyes still as frozen rain. They had helped him to his feet and brought him to his room where he resumed a statuesque position, seated on the edge of his bed and facing the wall with rigid stubbornness.

“Please leave,” was the only thing Castiel had said in response to constant questions if he was alright. Jack had tried to insist on staying, and while Sam had been attempting to convince the boy to give the angel the space he needed Dean had looked at his friend and almost stumbled back at what he saw in his eyes: complete and utter desolation.

He had run from that. He had run from Sam’s gentle persuasions to Jack, had run from the room and its empty walls that suddenly felt like a mausoleum, had run out to the main room only to be greeted with the same reflection of raw destruction in the sprawling debris.

“Jack said that, um, Cas was...” Sam stared into his freshly emptied glass. “Cas could hear the angels dying. That’s why--” he shifted a glance at the wreckage around them “--he said Cas could hear them praying for--”

The glass squeaked as Dean shoved it across the fragmented table. “That bastard,” he muttered. A throb pulsed behind his eyes and he couldn’t tell if it was a headache or the burn of rising rage. He snatched the bottle of jack by the neck and lifted it to his lips, letting it numb the urge to feel his fingers rip something whole down to mere remnants. What kind of father would spill his own children’s blood while listening to them beg for deliverance?

“What’s going to happen now that all the angels are--” Sam hesitated. “--didn’t Cas say before that Heaven is powered by angels? Is it going to collapse now?”

“I dunno. But if Chuck can bust Hell open and throw all the ghosts out from there he could probably also keep Heaven running if he wanted to. He makes all the damn rules.” He looked up at his brother. “We need to figure out how to kill him, Sammy. Before he plays father-of-genocide anywhere else.”

“About that. I was thinking we should try and summon Billie. Tomorrow,” he added quickly. “We need to know what the next trial is. Jack’s the only chance we have.”

“Tomorrow,” Dean repeated, clutching the whiskey bottle and standing up. “Let’s get a few hours of sleep in and then try and call Death.”

“Dean.” The pause in Sam’s voice made him stop halfway through the room but he didn’t turn around. “Do you think--do you really think he should be alone right now?”

He thought of Castiel sitting there in the vacancy of his room, staring at an unforgiving wall while the dying cries of his brothers and sisters played through his mind on an endless loop. “I’ll check on him before turning in. Go get some rest, Sam.”

Before putting his hand on the door handle to Castiel’s room, Dean took a deep breath. He toyed with the idea of simply going to his room and telling Sam, if he asked the next morning, that he had checked on him and he was okay, or as okay as he could be under the circumstances. After all, what did Sam expect him to do? What was he supposed to say to the sole survivor of an entire species, what comfort could he possibly offer that would lessen the torture of having to listen to your brothers and sisters die while being unable to save them?

When he stepped into the room the first thing he noticed was that Castiel had moved from the bed to the floor. He sat huddled in the corner of the room, knees drawn up to his chest, eyes fixed on the blank wall ahead.

“Cas?” Dean crossed the room in small steps, tiptoeing. He didn’t even realize he had lowered his voice, relaxed his shoulders, held out his hands placatingly even though the angel made no movement to acknowledge his entrance. “Sam and I are going to get some shut eye, and then we’re going to get on with these trials for Jack. We’re going to find Chuck and he’s going to pay for what he’s done.” It sounded hollow the moment the words left his mouth, like trying to stem an open wound with colored paper. Reality came soaking through the empty promises, dissolving them into clumps of ruined fibers.

Dean hesitated a few feet away from the corner where Castiel sat. He knew he had checked on Castiel, like he had told Sam he would, and yet he still found himself shuffling closer until he finally settled down on the floor beside him. He realized belatedly that he still had the whiskey bottle in hand and wondered if he should offer it to his friend, for nothing else but the symbolism of wishing he could drown his misery in a stiff drink.

Castiel still didn’t turn to face him, but Dean thought he felt his shoulder brush against his, tentatively, like a ghost trying to figure out the solid from the ethereal. He nudged a little closer, hoping that it would remind him of what still existed in the aftermath of evisceration.

“I didn’t hate them.” His words surprised Dean after they had been sitting there in the silence of uncountable moments. “I knew they hated me, but I didn’t hate them. None of them, not even the ones I had to--” he blinked once “-- _chose_ to kill.”

“I know,” Dean mumbled, even though he didn’t. He had never really known how it bruised Castiel to put a sword through his siblings time and time again, how it had left him pockmarked with a mosaic of unattended wounds. Angels were never on Dean’s list of preferable beings to interact with, but after all these years it had become easy to forget that they were still Castiel’s family. 

_I killed two of my brothers today._ An echo of the bitter grief in Castiel’s voice rang through his ears as he remembered a moment from years past, soon after Castiel first chose to rebel against Heaven. He had listed the death of those two angels as part of what he had lost in choosing to defy orders. He had stopped listing his losses soon after that, though, maybe because there were too many to count. Now there was enough to fill an ocean that they were sinking to the bottom of.

“Cas, look, I know what--scratch that, I have no idea what you’re going through.” He shifted his gaze to stare at the same wall Castiel was facing, as if they could meet halfway in the white space between. “But the angels, they were your family. And yes, I know that we’re your family now, but they were yours thousands of years, eons before us. Maybe your relationship with them was--” he frowned over the word “--complicated, but that doesn’t change that they were your brothers and sisters. It’s normal that you’re grieving them, even if they hurt you.” If it was solely up to him, Dean would have rejoiced that there were no more angels who would try to hunt down, torture, brutalize, and manipulate his friend, but he recognized that this wasn’t about what they had done, but what they were and would always be to Castiel. “And it’s okay if you miss them, Cas.”

Another brush of fabric moved against his shoulder and for a second Dean thought Castiel was turning to face him. But when the movement shivered against him again he realized that the angel was trembling. He glanced over and saw that Castiel was deliberately positioning himself away from him, angling his head to the other side before Dean caught the quiver of his chin and the glistening in his eyes.

“Do you want me to leave?” Dean asked quietly.

He didn’t think Castiel would answer. He waited for a minute or two before pushing himself to his feet. Before he walked away, though, he thought he heard the smallest whisper perforating the stillness.

“Maybe later.”

“Okay.” Dean slid down the wall again and sat down, tilting ever so slightly towards Castiel so that he would know that he was there. “I can do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "The Scientist" by Coldplay [(cover by Gabriella)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5RQJDoSfxA)


	3. I bet you don't curse God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack stood up and dusted the crumbs of candle wax from his fingers. He straightened his shoulders and moved to see the scrawled lines of incantation on the yellowed paper Sam was holding. “Maybe I should say the spell. Billie knows me better, we have a --” he glanced from one brother to the other “--a connection.”  
>    
> “Great.” Dean clapped his hands and rubbed them together impatiently. “Let’s get on with this so we can get a move on looking for Amara. We can’t take Chuck out if she’s still around, remember?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still in mourning from 15x18. I hope you guys are all hanging in there.
> 
> Note: there's a minor character death in this chapter but it happens off page.

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

“Hmm?” Sam lifted his head from the parchment he was studying and nodded at the armful of candles Jack was holding. “Just put them over there. And no, I’m not, but we’re going to try anyways.”

“She hasn’t answered any of my prayers.” Jack bent down and placed the first thick black candle on the edge of the chalk circle rubbed on the floor tiles. The rest of the room had been cleared of the broken glass and wooden splinters, enough to almost look like the events of the day before hadn’t happened. Jack hopped around the circle, putting each candle a few inches apart. “I wanted her to help as soon as I understood what was happening when Cas…” The corners of his mouth tightened at the reminder of the screams that had reverberated through this same space. It had streaked through his skin like burning hail, cold and hot at the same time, dark and bruising with every landing. Although he hadn’t been able to hear the transmissions of desperation it had all come through in Castiel’s voice; even now he could feel the echoes lingering in this room, the flickering phantoms of those crumbling prayers for mercy.

A hand pressed on his shoulder and he looked up to see Sam standing there. “Jack,” he said. The rest of the unspoken comfort took form without words, slipping around him like a padded coat in a blizzard. “I know you’ve been trying, but with this summoning, we won’t have to wait for her to respond. It should pull her right to us.”

“If it works,” Dean reminded them as he strolled over, flicking the lighter back and forth. “We’ve never tried it before.”

“It worked back when you summoned the old Death for your space adventure,” Sam replied wearily. Dean almost audibly gulped at the reminder but there was no bitterness in Sam’s voice. In fact he did little more than shrug at Dean’s poorly concealed discomfort.

“Yeah, well, that’s cuz old Death and I had a connection. Plus he had a weakness for taquitos and tamales. I have no idea what new Death’s comfort food is.” He spread his hands around as if pointing out the clear lack of banquet offerings. “We do have some leftover Chinese takeout in the fridge though. I could top it off with an omelet or two.”

Jack stood up and dusted the crumbs of candle wax from his fingers. “I don’t think Billie would like that.” He straightened his shoulders and moved to see the scrawled lines of incantation on the yellowed paper Sam was holding. “Maybe I should say the spell. Billie knows me better, we have a --” he glanced from one brother to the other “--a connection.”

“Great, we’ve all got our Death connections.” Dean clapped his hands and rubbed them together impatiently. “Let’s get on with this so we can get a move on looking for Amara. We can’t take Chuck out if she’s still around, remember?”

The thin parchment felt light in Jack’s hand and he wondered how such a fragile sliver of writing in a dead language could be enough to pull down the Lord of Death herself. A sudden thought entered his mind and he spoke it over the din of Sam and Dean arguing about where God’s sister might be: “What if Go-Chuck comes here before I’m ready to kill him? He could hurt you. All of you.”

“That won’t happen.” Sam turned around with a faint smile of reassurance. “Remember? Last time Billie was here she said she upped the bunker’s warding to keep us hidden until it was time.”

“Sam is right.” Jack whirled around to see Castiel walking into the room, hands tucked into the pockets of his trenchcoat. The parchment floated to the ground as Jack dropped it and rushed over, bypassing the outstretched hands of Sam and Dean and their accompanying murmurs of “hey, wait a--”

He reached Castiel and wrapped his arms around him, tucking his head against his shoulder. The echoes hurt less when he could see him, feel him here, fabric bunched between his hands and heart pulsing against his own. “Jack,” Castiel murmured, and the sharpness of the memories filed down just a little more, blunting into something that didn’t stab every time he moved through the room. “I’m alright.”

Jack pulled away reluctantly. “I wanted to stay with you, but Sam told me--I needed to make sure you were okay.”

Castiel rested a hand on his shoulder, the same one Sam had held a moment ago, and squeezed it softly. “I’m fine. I’m here to help.”

“Hey, Cas,” Dean was moving forward now, a thread of worry lacing his words. “We can handle a little chat with Death, you should be resting, or whatever.” 

“I’m here,” Castiel repeated, the two words resounding in quiet boldness. His eyes were still clouded with the weight that would undoubtedly weave into the fabric of the other burdens he bore like a cape from his shoulders, but there was light between the overcast pall. Determination glinted in a brightness the sun could not compete with. His hand stayed on Jack’s shoulder a moment longer and the boy missed the warmth when he finally nodded and stepped away towards the circle of candles. 

The knife slit Jack’s palm easily and then the words from the parchment filled his voice, running out steadily as the three men stood around him, like redwoods in a forest clearing. He drew on their faith, their unwavering hope that bound even the thinnest frayed ends together and made a knot strong enough to hold the weight of miracles.

But by the third time Jack was reading through the spell he felt the collective slump of shoulders behind him.

“Maybe I should’ve reheated the Chinese food,” Dean grumbled, scraping the toe of his shoe noisily against the back of the staircase railing. 

“Maybe she’s ignoring us on purpose. She does seem to have a very particular schedule in mind.” Sam scrunched a hand over his face and sighed. “Jack, it’s okay, we can try again later. Maybe I’ll ask Rowena to look over the spell.”

“Would Rowena have a spell for locating Amara?” Castiel spoke up. “She did it before, didn’t she?”

“True.” Dean pushed away from the staircase and paced around the lit candles. “I don’t know if that’s because Amara was out in the open though, but it’s worth a shot.” He shot a grin over at his brother. “Get your witch on, Sam, we’re going to Hell.”

“I should go with you--” Castiel was interrupted by Jack’s excited shout as he scrambled over and tugged on his coat sleeve. 

“Look, it’s working!” 

One by one the candles fizzled out to chimneys of withering smoke. The air tightened into a vacuum that seemed to crackle at the seams. Castiel followed Dean and Sam as they edged closer together, eyes scanning the room around them as if they could predict where Death might abruptly materialize.

Another pop fractured the air and the dried herbs in the metal bowl began to smolder, releasing a scented plume of scorched blood and burnt petals. The atoms glimmered in the oxygen behind him and Jack spun around to see a figure standing in the corner, facing the wall. Even from the back he immediately recognized who it was. 

“Chuck,” Dean spat out from behind him, terror braided through the disdain. “Sam, I thought you said he couldn’t get in here.”

“Yeah but you gave me a ring,” Chuck said, turning around with a slow grin. His hands were held out in front of him, dusting a gray mist from his fingers. “Or you called the position that I took over. Sort of. I’m not sure about this new gig, to be honest.”

“Where’s Billie?” Castiel growled, stepping in front of Jack. Sam and Dean followed the formation, forming a three-cornered shield that Jack was itching to burst through. His eyes itched gold and his fingertips twitched with what he distinctly recognized as fury. He hadn’t felt that pulse seeping through him in a long time, not since the archangel Michael from the other world had threatened his family. His grace sparked fiercely against the very monstrosity of the being in front of him.

“That’s a good question actually. Where does Death go when she dies?” Chuck swiped the last specks of grey from his fingers and put his hands on his hips. “Not even I know that.”

“You killed Billie?” Sam sputtered, stepping forward. “Why?”

“It’s part of the redemption arc. For me, for you, for all of the--” Chuck raised his hands appraisingly as he strolled around the room, “for all of the mistakes I made. I’m cleaning up to give everyone a second chance, you see, and that’s why the bad batch has gotta go. First draft, second draft, they say bestsellers usually go through at least four drafts, right?”

“Is that why you murdered all the angels?” Castiel asked, and Jack found himself stepping closer to the angel when Chuck turned to focus on him.

“Oh yeah, they were definitely a first draft kind of error. I mean, trying to make perfect beings of divine intent? Oh, don’t look so judgemental, Castiel,” Chuck sighed. “They were broken. All of you are. Nothing but dangling modifiers and comma splices and run-on sentences. I can do much better.” He stopped, crossing his arms and tapping a finger to his chin. “You’re wrong about one thing, though.”

“What?” Dean snapped.

“I didn’t kill _all_ the angels.” Before Jack could react Chuck shot out a hand and pulled Castiel in front of him, fingers around his neck. He slammed his other hand out towards them, throwing him along with Sam and Dean to the wall. 

Castiel struggled in his grip, hands tearing at the cuff of his sweater sleeve. Chuck leaned in closer to his widening eyes. “You’ll see, I’m going to make a better Angel of Thursday. One with less cracks, less--” he looked him up and down “--less damage. You know, I used to have a soft spot for you, Castiel.”

Jack wrestled wildly against the force holding him back. He scratched at the air in front of him, clawing until his face flushed red from the breathlessness. Sam and Dean were starting to slump, eyes flickering from the strain of the pressure in their lungs. Still they fought to get free, swinging their bodies away from the wall like pinned butterflies trying to fly free.

“But every good writer needs to kill their darlings.” Chuck tightened his fingers and Castiel’s eyes rolled back as a piercing whine of light began to fill the room. Jack saw the shape of Dean’s mouth rounding in a scream and Sam’s lips bursting in a single syllable of _no_ but they couldn’t see what was happening. 

Not the way Jack could. He could see everything. The way Castiel’s skin started to simmer, like a stove had turned on beneath the layers of flesh and blood. The jerking thrash of his limbs as they popped and folded into distorted angles those bones were never meant to form. The scramble of his fingers to hold to something, anything, as grace began leaking from every pore, tendrils of light escaping in sputters. His eyes swimming in sockets of fear as Chuck stared him down, unmoving, hand locked on his neck. 

Jack could hear everything, too. The hiss of air splintering, molecules fleeing from around the angel. The pop of blood vessels bursting inside and lungs deflating as ribs snapped and speared. The cry--the cry rising through his swollen, bruised windpipe, slipping off the edge of cracked lips and falling in a desperate plea. _“Father.”_

Gold thundered through his veins, a storm erupting across a sky with no possible retreat. Jack threw his arms out, two mere limbs palpitating with a tornado of energy. His mind burned with the single command roaring through him, one that his paralyzed voice could not vocalize. 

_GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM_

A swath of light burst from his fingertips, cutting through the force holding him back and shooting across the room in a spear of light. Castiel dropped to the ground with a heavy thud and Chuck stumbled back, holding the gushing stump of his wrist. “Are you kidding me?” he shouted.

Then he disappeared in a blink. 

“Cas!” The pressure disappeared and Jack felt his body skidding across the floor. He knew Sam and Dean were behind him, or maybe in front of him, but Castiel seemed very far away. Too far to reach, too far to feel beneath his fingertips and feel the familiar pulse of his grace to know that he was alive. He heard the air heave and roll away in ribbons around him but he couldn’t follow their direction. Someone grabbed him, someone going on about Castiel still breathing and being unconscious, but the voice didn’t stay with him. It flopped over the edges of his blurring mind like a twig going over a waterfall. Gold evaporated from him, leaving him awash in silver lights that flickered out one by one as his eyelids dropped shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ["I Bet You Don't Curse God"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxLlsYv0Fls) by Christina Grimmie. I'll have playlist with all the chapter title songs and some other songs that inspired me during the writing of this fic at the very end.
> 
> There's a little headcanon here and in future chapters about angel grace and how it's almost sentient at times. Also how Jack and Cas can sense each other's grace. 
> 
> Also I'm sorry for the Cas whump, there's definitely some comfort coming up...but also a lot more whump. I'm sorry I don't know why I'm like this.


	4.  every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Cas?” Sam’s mop of dark hair hovered over him, obscuring half of the lightbulb. “You’re awake.”
> 
> I know how we can trap God, Castiel tried to say, but all that he heard leaving his mouth was a low growl of vowels tripping their feet over consonants. Once he drained the glass of water Sam handed him, he made another attempt.
> 
> “I know how we can trap God,” he said, and from the look of surprise on Sam’s face he knew it had come out properly this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally get Cas' POV in this chapter! It was my first time writing it and I hope it does the character at least some justice.
> 
> How are we all feeling in this final week of SPN? We're truly [at the end of the line](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgY97YtIjI).
> 
> Please give your love to my endlessly patient beta reader, [alpacamybags](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacamybags/pseuds/alpacamybags), who has written some terrific codas for recent episodes that you should check out.

_Incandescent pearls of light gather on the horizon, gliding down a silk thread of sky one. Each one unravels into the other, forming a milky swirl of galaxy that spreads out to the blurred edges of the universe._

_Castiel watches the droplets trickle into him, crystallizing under the heavy pant of his breath. He feels the density of his vessel fluctuate as his grace surges to form bricks and stack itself higher, half inch by half inch._

_Memories, long forgotten in millenniums bygone, appear on the surface in diaphanous threads._

_“Do you think Father is hiding?” His voice, young and timid. His wings, soft and white._

_“No, Cassie, he’s just busy watching all the worlds.” Balthazar, smiling impishly, strutting as he marches around the pristine hall._

_No, room. Constellations etched in the ceiling. Throne room._

_“Maybe he’s in the circle.” He is so small then, even compared to other fledglings._

_Balthazar scoffs, flutters up to perch on the armrest of the chair. “There’s no such thing. Come on, let’s go see if we can sneak into the archangel’s quarters. I heard Lucifer is out of town this weekend.”_

_Broken ribs scratch at the grace mingling through the perforated marrow. He is dimly aware of his lungs floating like balloons swollen with water. They go right through his hands when he picks them up, leaving him with a stain shaped like his palm._

_Hiding, wings arched over his head. Eyes searching between the ruffled barbs, peering through the dipping reflections of sound._

_“Whatcha scared of, kiddo?” Brown eyes meeting his own. Hands parting the trembling curtain of feathers._

_“Gabriel.” Stumbling to his feet at attention only to be nudged down playfully._

_“Don’t sweat it, little guy. Are you waiting out the tantrum of your big bros?”_

_Refusing to confess, but willing to nod silently._

_There had been fire this time. The heat of their words ricocheting off the halls like misfired rockets._

_A hand on his shoulder. “It’ll blow over, don’t worry. They just need a time-out in the circle.”_

_One of the pearls jostles against the other, springing a quake under the smooth surface. Castiel feels his vessel shudder as his grace flares to bridge the breach. Memories fall between the fracture and then re-emerge, befuddled from the disruption._

_“Castiel. You have nowhere to run.” Raphael’s voice follows him where his wings do not. “The circle does not exist. You will not find refuge there.”_

_Planet rings spinning, falling in and out of each other’s embrace._

_Hellfire clawing the seven spirals of screams that swarm around his descent._

_Holy fire scrambling to join hands as shadows loom outside the circumference._

_Sigils dripping red and round, eyeless faces burned into walls of concrete._

_White light rising in celestial embers from rings drawn in the sand._

_“Our Father seeks solace.” Michael’s words, thundering across stone pillars._

_Circle._

_Solace._

Neon globes speared into his sight as Castiel’s eyelids pried themselves open. The strain in his chest deflated with the gasp that rushed from his throat.

“Cas?” Sam’s mop of dark hair hovered over him, obscuring half of the lightbulb. “You’re awake.”

_I know how we can trap God,_ Castiel tried to say, but all that he heard leaving his mouth was a low growl of vowels tripping their feet over consonants. Once he drained the glass of water Sam handed him, he made another attempt.

“I know how we can trap God,” he said, and from the look of surprise on Sam’s face he knew it had come out properly this time. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and stood up, ignoring how Sam’s hand on his elbow pulled with the weight of gravity.

“Cas, slow down,” he heard him saying. “You’ve been out for days and now you suddenly want to trap God? What was going on in there?”

His eyes traveled down his limbs, testing out the nerves in his toes and fingertips, the length and limits to the stretch of his neck and shoulders. “My grace. It needed time to rebuild.” He closed his eyes, feeling the familiar rush of sapphire glowing from his retinas down to the skeletal frame of his wings in the ether. “As it came together I remembered things I had long forgotten. Memories about the Circle. I need to tell you and--” he looked around the room. “Where’s Dean?”

“He went to check out a lead on Amara. It turned out to be nothing, he’s on his way back. Cas, are you sure you’re fine? You said your grace was rebuilt--” Sam stepped closer, one hand almost out to steady him although Castiel knew that his posture remained quite solid. “--did Chuck tear it apart?”

“Yes,” he answered shortly. “Did you say you sent Dean after Amara on his own? She’s one of the most powerful beings in the world, and with Chuck still out there, why didn’t you go with him?”

“Well, you were unconscious and Jack is still recovering, so someone had to--”

_“Jack.”_ The room faded behind him as he rushed out the door, moving down the hall oblivious to Sam’s repeated reassurances that mostly consisted of the word “fine” in different inflections. The door to Jack’s room swung aside at the push of his hand. His steps stilled at the threshold of the room. “What happened?” The question that should have been asked the moment he opened his eyes finally crawled to the front of his mind.

“You don’t remember? Chuck attacked you--we couldn’t see, Dean and I. We thought you were dead.” Sam stopped and looked back at him. “Jack blasted at Chuck with something; it shot out and cut his hand right off. Chuck disappeared after that, and Jack fainted. We think that what he did depleted his grace somehow.”

The shadows of the darkened room parted as Castiel walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed. He took Jack’s hand in his, wrapping his fingers around and pushing flares of grace against the numbness there. “What can we do?” 

“Cas, he’s alright. He’s getting stronger every day, he even joined us for breakfast this morning and managed to eat something. He just needs to rest more.”

A flicker of gold brushed against Castiel’s thumb and he let his shoulders unfurl. Jack’s grace was still there, faint but growing. He rose to his feet and bent over Jack’s forehead, pressing a kiss above his closed eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Hey.” Turning around Castiel saw Dean leaning against the door frame, a bright smile veiling the exhaustion in his eyes. “Look who’s back among the living. How are you feeling?”

“ ‘Good as new’ is the correct term, I believe.” He held out his arms as if to demonstrate his wellness. “My grace is restored.”

“What about your healing mojo, can you fix--” Dean pointed at his throat “--that?”

“Dean, he just woke up, give him time to--”

Castiel tilted his head slightly. He felt his grace surging up and then bouncing back as if it had been rejected. He crossed the room and peered into the mirror over the sink, ghosting his hands over the striped lines of distorted purple and green covering his neck. Tiny red and black spots speckled the discolored skin and the distinct shape of a palm and fingers could be seen in the bruising. He stared at his reflection as his throat bobbed, swallowing once and then twice as he tried to heal it again. And again.

“Cas?”

He left the bathroom and motioned for the brothers to follow him outside. “Let Jack rest,” he began, closing the door gently behind them.

“Cas, why can’t you heal--” Dean’s finger was pointing again and Castiel shook his head with a sigh.

“I can’t. It's a contusion born from divine touch. I can't remove it.”

“Chuck branded you?” Sam gasped.

“Not intentionally. I believe it remains because he was interrupted. If he had finished taking me apart it would not be there.”

“Ain’t that a glass half full,” Dean muttered, shifting his eyes away from the mottled bruising.

“Does it hurt?” Sam asked quietly.

“No. Sam, Dean, I know how we can trap Chuck.”

“Aren’t we going to kill him?” Dean frowned. “We went over that whole trapping scheme already, it doesn’t work.”

“Not trapping him like with the Mark, trapping him to kill him,” Castiel explained. “When my grace was rebuilding it reminded me about the Circle of Solace. It was a rumor among the angels, that God had a circle he would retreat to when he wanted solitude from His creations. Once inside the Circle nothing could get in or out unless he wanted it to.”

Understanding lit up Sam’s eyes. “Like a God-level version of holy fire?”

“Yes, but this wasn’t something you could just make. The magnitude of it--there was only ever one. The archangels used to talk about it, I remember Gabriel telling me about when I was a fledgling. But it was a--”

“You were a--” Sam held up a finger. “You were a fledgling?”

“Like a baby angel?” A slow grin was spreading across Dean’s face.

Castiel frowned. “I suppose you could call it that. Why does this surprise you?”

“I dunno, I thought you were just this--” Dean waved his hand up and down “--bad ass nerdy little angel from day one. I didn’t know you had an innocent diaper phase.”

“We didn’t--I wasn’t an infant--and this a vessel--my true form is--” he huffed in irritation and waved his hands. “More importantly, the Circle was a secret. None of the other angels ever actually saw it. But it exists, I am sure of this.”

Dean nodded. “So we get this fortress-of-solitude thing, we can keep Chuck in it until we figure out how to kill him. Like a containment cell.”

“Precisely.” Castiel straightened out the lapel of his coat and moved forward. “We might have to adapt the spellwork or sigils to make it so that we control what gets in or out, not the person inside. I will know more once I retrieve it.”

“Cas, wait.” Sam pressed a hand against his shoulder. “Where is this thing?”

“In Heaven.” He kept his gaze on the space ahead, where the thin rectangle of winding hallway remained absolute even when his own voice threatened to waver. “I need to go back to Heaven.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ["What Sarah Said"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNacDL-Z9Z0) by Death Cab for Cutie.
> 
> More of my headcanon in here about angels and how they were raised/trained. Also the Circle of Solace is totally a plot device I just made up, it's not based on any actual lore. 
> 
> What's your idea of what Heaven and angels were like pre-canon? Do you also go for the idea of fledglings or something else?


	5. there's nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don’t understand.” Dean’s words were hushed but rising high like the incline of a roller coaster. “The last time there was something like this in Heaven, it was from when he was crazy with all those souls. You know what he told me when he was back from Purgatory?” He leaned closer, his voice plunging over the top and careening downhill. “He said if he saw the state that Heaven was in---he was afraid he would kill himself. If he sees what Chuck did now…”
> 
> A sudden vision scalded Sam’s mind, one of him sitting in the car staring at a sandbox that never illuminated again, waiting in vain for the last angel who decided to go home and never return. “Cas is different now,” he insisted aloud, banishing the nightmare visage from his head. “He’s stronger. And he knows we’re counting on him to come back. He can handle it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was writing this chapter I kept hearing Meg's voice in my head saying "We're going to Heaven, Clarence."
> 
> I miss Meg :(

“No. No, no, you’re not going to do that.” Sam folded his arms as Dean paced up and down the hall, shaking his head almost violently. “You can’t go back there.”

“Dean. There’s no one there to--no one’s going to stop me.”

_Hurt me_ was what Sam heard, and he knew that that would’ve been the first concern on Dean’s mind before. But Sam understood that his protests were born of another fear this time. It had torn the front room to shreds and sent Castiel into a state of almost catatonic grief hearing the angels dying. Actually witnessing the physical evidence of the massacre might send him over a brink too deep and too far for them to reach in and pull him out.

“I have to go. This is the best plan we have. With Billie dead and Amara still missing there’s no other way for us to get ahead of Chuck. And he will be back, you can be sure of that.” Castiel turned to Sam, his eyes pleading for some sign of understanding. “We need the Circle to have any chance of beating him.”

“We’ll find another way that doesn’t involve you having to go--” Dean flung his hand out into the air “-- _there_. Besides, if you leave the bunker you’ll be unprotected. Chuck could find you and…” his eyes moved back to the splotchy marks on Castiel’s neck and he shook his head. “You can’t go, Cas.”

“I’m going to Heaven,” Castiel stated firmly. The four words sounded like the detonation of a bomb.

“Let me come with you,” Sam heard himself saying before he figured out the logic behind the statement.

“Oh, what, you’ve got some anti-God repellent we don’t know about?” Dean snapped.

“I appreciate the offer, Sam, but humans can’t go through the portal.”

“I know. But I’ll drive you to the portal and I’ll stay there, keep on look-out until you get back.” He glanced over at his brother. “Dean, you need to keep looking for Amara.”

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “Dammit,” he breathed. “Okay, but come right back- no detours, don’t stop for anything. And Cas, don’t stay up there longer than you need to.”

“I’ll meet you at the front,” Castiel nodded to Sam before motioning to the door behind him. “I want to check on Jack one more time before we leave.”

Sam headed down the hall to pack his bag when he felt a pair of fingers digging into his elbow. “What?”

“Sam,” his brother hissed, eyes wide. “We shouldn’t let Cas go. You have no idea what he’s going to see there.”

He twisted his shoulder back and wrestled his arm free. “Dean,” he started, running a hand through his hair. “You saw him. He would have gone with or without our permission. At least this way--”

“You don’t understand.” His brother’s words were hushed but rising high like the incline of a rollercoaster. “The last time there was something like this in Heaven, it was from when he was crazy with all those souls. You know what he told me when he was back from Purgatory?” He leaned closer, his voice plunging over the top and careening downhill. “He said if he saw the state that Heaven was in---he was afraid he would kill himself. If he sees what Chuck did now…”

A sudden vision scalded Sam’s mind, one of him sitting in the car staring at a sandbox that never illuminated again, waiting in vain for the last angel who decided to go home and never return. “Cas is different now,” he insisted aloud, banishing the nightmare visage from his head. “He’s stronger. And he knows we’re counting on him to come back. He can handle it.”

As Dean powered through another string of objections Sam found himself praying to whatever last merciful higher power was out there that he was right.

* * *

Castiel turned the keys in the ignition, switching off the rumble of the truck engine and letting an undisturbed hush settle over the driver’s compartment. Sam wiggled in the passenger's seat, leaning over to see between the eaves of trimmed trees and shrubbery. The sandbox sat there, squatting between a freshly painted yellow and pink swing set and a seesaw with rainbow unicorn seats.

When Castiel made no move to get out of his seat Sam snuck a glance in his direction. Castiel was staring at the spot in between the trees where the red rim of the sandbox could be seen, and Sam figured he might need a few moments to gather his courage before going in. He folded back into his seat and waited patiently, but when Castiel finally moved it wasn’t to exit the car, but to face him.

“I can’t go in,” he stated. “There’s no one there to draw the spell to open the portal.”

“You can’t--you can’t draw it yourself?”

“No, I don’t know it. Only the angels who guarded the entrance did. The portal can also be activated from inside, but there’s no one…there.”

“Okay. What about other entrances to Heaven? Didn’t Metatron have some secret ones? Or maybe Rowena could figure out a spell?”

Castiel offered him a wry smile. “You want to get to Heaven through Hell? I don’t think that will work. And all of Metraton’s secret entrances were sealed off back when we were fighting the Darkness. Again, they can only be re-opened by another angel who knows the spell or from the inside. We’re not exactly,” he dropped his gaze down to his hands, “we’re not quite built to be solitary beings.”

“Hey, we’ll find a way to get you in,” Sam said, attempting an encouraging smile even though the whispering voice in the back of his head still doubted the wisdom of letting Castiel go in at all. He mentally ran through a list of beings who might be able to access Heaven and suddenly brightened. “What about reapers? They have their own way of getting to Heaven, don’t they?”

“I think so. But reapers only take the souls of the deceased, Sam.” He squinted slightly, the corners of his mouth tightening. “And I won’t let you kill yourself to talk to one.”

“Cas, no, I wouldn’t do that,” Sam explained hurriedly. “We just need to go to a hospital or hospice and find one. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

It turned out to be as effortless as Sam had described. As soon as they stepped into the terminal ward of Saint Mary’s Hospital Castiel stiffened, his eyes locking onto one bed in the corner of the sterile white room. The shriveled form of a balding man lay there, almost completely smothered in a tangle of tubes and wires.

“Do you see one?” Sam whispered, smiling apologetically at the nurse who raised a concerned eyebrow at the two men who came in claiming to be hospice researchers and were now focused intently on one blank corner of the ward.

“Yes.” Castiel paused. “He is surprised to see me. He thought we were all dead.”

Sam nudged closer to the angel. “Can he get us to Heaven?”

Castiel stood unmoving for a moment longer and then looked questioningly at Sam before turning back to the undisturbed patch of air. “I am his guardian,” he said with unwavering authority. “I go where he does.”

“Cas, what did he say?”

“He can take you because you have a soul. I will be allowed to accompany you as your guardian. He will meet us in the hospital's church.”

“Wow, he agreed just like that? No deals or questions?” Sam traipsed after Castiel’s quickening steps through the bustling hallways.

“Chuck killed their boss. He was quite relieved to know we were trying to get rid of him.” Castiel pushed open the entrance to the room marked “Chapel” and motioned for Sam to sit beside him at a pew in the back. “We have to wait until he finishes reaping that patient. He can only transport one soul at a time.”

The boards of the wooden pew rubbed hard against Sam’s back and he struggled to fold his legs underneath the low bench. “He’s not going to reap me, is he?” he wondered aloud.

“Sam.” Castiel looked at him with unwavering conviction. “I would never let anyone hurt you.”

“Oh, my dear. What happened to you?”

The two looked up to see an elderly woman perched at the end of the pew. Snow white hair fell loosely around her sallow cheeks, and her weathered hands clutched a faded floral purse. She shuffled closer to Castiel, brown eyes wide with sympathy as she reached towards his neck. “Who hurt you, child?”

“My father.” Castiel answered before Sam had a chance to speak up.

The woman’s gaze softened with sympathy and she closed her eyes. Her hands moved up to Castiel’s head, folded there like a benediction. “May you find the mercy to forgive him, as your Heavenly Father would.”

Castiel lowered his chin slightly, as if accepting the blessing. “Thank you,” he said, offering her a grateful smile before she moved on.

Sam looked away and rubbed the heel of his shoe against the polished wooden floor. He knew Castiel was touching his neck self-consciously, and he half-wondered if he should get him a scarf to wear or if that would only highlight the injustice he’d suffered.

“She meant well,” Castiel said, as if knowing what was on his mind.

“I know.” He risked a glance up at Castiel who was poking at the wrinkles around the skin of his neck. “It really doesn’t hurt at all?”

“No, but I see that it makes others uncomfortable. For that I wish I could heal it.” His finger bridged over the stretch of discolored flesh in the shape of Chuck’s thumb and Sam shifted his eyes away again. He could still see that shrill burst of light that broke out when Chuck started to crush the life from his friend; the moment when he had been sure they were going to have to watch Castiel die. Again.

“He’s here.” Castiel stood up abruptly, the tail of his coat flapping in the sudden movement. “Are you ready?”

* * *

The last time Sam had been in Heaven was almost ten years ago. It shouldn’t have felt like returning to an old family vacation spot and looking around to see what had changed, but that’s exactly what it felt like. He pivoted in several full circles, trying to figure out what was different before he remembered that the Heaven he had seen was his own personal one.

Freddie the reaper had dropped them off in the public area of Heaven, so to speak, and the result was a web of white corridors that appeared eerily similar to some futuristic image of a world devoid of hope and emotion.

“This way,” Castiel said, taking off down the hall on the right, which looked identical to the one on the left, as well as the ones in front of and behind them. “It should be somewhere in the throne room, if my fledgling memory was correct.”

The term brought a small smile to Sam’s face. Questions came to mind, ones he asked in the hopes of keeping Castiel distracted while his eyes moved up and down the halls, looking for the signs of any dismembered or brutalized bodies.“You really had a childhood as an angel? I never thought about that. What was it like?”

“It wasn’t like humans have, but yes, our forms begin smaller and then grow to full capacity. Mostly it took time for our wings to grow and warrior training to be complete. We didn’t play as human children would.” The side of his mouth lifted a little. “Although Balthazar definitely tried to, he always found a way to sneak out of training.”

Sam blinked, trying to imagine Castiel as an angel the way Christmas cards and Hallmark movies portrayed, cherubic and floating down these pristine halls in search of adventure with Balthazar as the mischievous ringleader. “Did Heaven always look like this, though? It’s a little--” he patted the bare wall beside him “--sparse.”

“It’s designed for efficiency. We were soldiers,” Castiel reminded him. “Think of this as our barracks. We were here to either report from missions or train for upcoming ones. Or on guard duty. If we wanted something different from these halls we would sometimes visit personal Heavens.” A look of reflection passed over his eyes. “There was one I used to favor, a--” his footsteps stopped and he held up a hand. Surprise widened his eyes and then flickered, giving way to a pall of grief as his lips formed a name in hushed reverence: 

“Israfiel.” His fingers bent, drifting through the air as if catching invisible fireflies. “He was killed here.”

“Where?”

“Here. The air is vibrating with residue from his molecules. He was atomized from the inside out.” His fist closed slowly around nothing. “Chuck took them apart the way he tried to do to me.”

“Chuck--you--he was _atomizing_ you? Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. It’s…” His hand dropped back down to his side. “It’s unnecessary. He must have a reason for killing them like that.”

Sam squeezed his shoulder, willing himself to believe that their friend would never suffer such a fate. “Let’s find that Circle, Cas.”

As they continued Castiel continued to pause every few steps to reach out into the air and recognize the angel who had been atomized there. Sometimes it took him a moment or two, eyes closed in concentration and fingers toying with the nothingness in front of them, before the name crossed his lips.

Demetrius.

Oriel.

Ismael.

Castiel would wait a moment after uttering each name, the pause serving as a funeral with no coffin, a eulogy with no words.

As they made their way down the next hallway Sam had to slow his steps again as Castiel came to a halt, hand raised and fingers ghosting over the space in front of him. Sam hovered at his side, watching the slow tilt of his head and bracing himself for the diagnosis.

“Zuriel?” Castiel spoke in a whisper, almost to himself. “No, he was killed when the Empty came here.”

“The Empty was in Heaven? When?”

“Elias.” His fingers closed in a fist and he lowered his head. “We can go on now.”

“Wait,” Sam quickened his steps, his mind flipping through the catalogue of conversations in the past three years since Castiel had returned from the Empty. He couldn’t recall ever hearing about the entity leaving its plane of existence, much less entering Heaven. “When was the Empty here?”

Castiel’s footsteps resounding off the polished hallway floor was the only answer he received.

Sam was about to ask the question again when the angel finally spoke without slowing his gait. “The first time Jack died, he was human. He came to Heaven but the Empty wanted to claim him because of his angel side. It invaded Heaven to try and take him.”

“Oh, right, when we did the spell with Lily and you went to pull his soul back--” he paused. A faint tremor of static was rising in his head, like a glitch in a song that leaves you wondering what word was taken out. “How did you convince the Empty not to take Jack?”

The static grew, a buzz of hysteria that became louder when Castiel kept walking. Sam knew that he should follow him but his legs were rooted to the ground. A shadow flickered on the edge of the panic brimming in his eyes. “Cas, what did you do?” he breathed, terrified to hear the answer.

Up ahead Castiel paused. “The throne room is here.” 

Sam felt his legs snap into action. The hallway blurred under his feet, wings of white flapping past as he ran and grabbed Castiel, spinning him around by the shoulder. “You didn’t, Cas. Please tell me you didn’t.” 

The words ‘ _a deal_ ’ were burning his tongue and he bit down to keep it from crossing his lips. 

“Cas. You didn’t.”

The glimpse of resignation in Castiel’s eyes confirmed Sam’s fears, turning those spectral thoughts into reality. A scream pushed against his chest and he didn’t realize how tightly he was digging his hand into Castiel’s shoulder until he felt his fingers being pulled off one by one. 

“I had to,” Castiel said calmly, before motioning for him to come around the corner. “Besides, you don’t have to worry about it. It’s only going to take me when I’m happy, and our lives are rarely, if ever, that.”

Sam realized they were now standing in Heaven’s throne room. He had expected it to be different, somehow, gilded with gold and permeated with celestial light and glory. But it was the same colorless scheme of white walls with a single vaulted white chair in the center. Castiel’s last words trickled through his mind like they were entering the scene in slow motion. “Happy? It’s going to take you when you’re--Cas, you’ve been keeping this from us ever since--” his voice cracked, eyes filling enough to blur the white around him into an endless cloud. “Why?”

“I had to,” Castiel repeated from somewhere to his left. “I love him.”

“He loves you, too.” Sam bent down to where Castiel was studying a pattern of faint markings on the floor. “We all do. Did you think about--how would he feel if you left him? If you were just gone one day?”

“You and Dean would take care of him.” In that moment Sam hated the look of utter trust in his friend’s blue eyes. “I know you will.” He ran a finger over the carvings etched into the stone below him and then pressed his thumb into the crook of an S-shaped marking. Before Sam could fire out another argument Castiel held up his hand, motioning for silence as he scanned the space around them and slowly uttered three words:

_“I seek solace.”_

In the glimmer of a blink the entire room transformed, the way a mere sleight of hand reveals another side in a paper fortune teller. Instead of the throne room, they now stood in front of a shimmering arena of light that seemed to be alive. It rippled like a waterfall, bending and reflecting shades of shadow and clear. The wall of light rose from the ground up to almost disappear past the ceiling, the edges dissolving at the end until they became part of the above.

Sam reached out a finger to touch the humming wall when Castiel clamped a hand down on his wrist.

“Sam.” Was that wonder in his voice? Was the brilliance as alluring, as rapturous to the angel as it was to him? He turned to face Castiel and noticed that he wasn’t pointing at the wall but at what lay beyond it: a dark smudge moving in the corner.

“There’s someone in the Circle,” Castiel said, his finger bobbing up and down.

Shaking, Sam realized.

“Chuck?” Sam felt his heart hammering a hole through his chest.

“No.” Castiel dropped to a crouch, peering through the luminescent strands. “It’s a woman--it’s--"

“Amara?”

Castiel shook his head mutely. He raised a hand cautiously to the surface of the wall. The minute his fingers made contact a soft _whoosh_ resounded through the room and the light show dissipated to reveal a string of intricate carvings etched in concentric circles around the room. Huddled to a far corner of the inner circle was a dark-haired woman wearing a soft gray suit. Her knees were pulled up, almost touching her forehead. Two pale green eyes stared out at them.

“Sister.” The gasp left Castiel’s lips with the fervency of a hallelujah. He was on his feet in an instant, moving towards the woman with uncontained joy. “Serafiel.” 

As soon as he drew near the woman scrambled to her feet and backed up even further, despite the wall of the room preventing her from going more than a few inches back. “Where is he?” she chattered, glancing from left to right.

“Give her a minute, Cas.” Sam stepped into the circle hesitantly, wondering if it was an angel-access-only arena before releasing a breath of relief when he wasn’t immediately vaporized. He held up both hands to the woman, putting on his most placating smile. “We’re here to help you. I’m--”

“Sam Winchester, vessel of Lucifer,” she quoted numbly, flattening further against the wall.

“Okay, that--” he glanced at Castiel who looked unduly apologetic. “Looks like my reputation precedes me. Tell her we’re not going to hurt her.”

“Sister.” Sam heard every breath of awe in that single word. He saw the glisten of joy in Castiel’s eyes and the smile wreathed on his face, one that vanished as she recoiled almost violently from his outstretched hand.

_“Castiel,”_ she spat, eyes narrowing as if facing down a curse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [Life is Beautiful](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjX2KYuAJcA) by Sixx A.M ([the acoustic version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93A30cbUGEc) is also gorgeous).
> 
> This chapter introduces my first angel OC! Serafiel is going to be around for the rest of the story and I hope you enjoy getting to know her.


	6. the world is spinning like a weathervane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hello,” Jack beamed, raising his hand at the woman who stepped haltingly on the staircase landing. “I’m--”
> 
> “Jack Kline, spawn of Lucifer.” She clutched at the blanket and glowered at him before shifting her eyes up a mere fraction. “Dean Winchester, sword of Michael.”
> 
> “I know, we’re famous.” Dean dipped his hand in a mock bow. “And you are--”
> 
> “Serafiel.” She shuffled to the side, walking past Dean’s attempt at a handshake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updates! It's taken me awhile to recover from Supernatural ending. I still catch myself sometimes thinking that there's going to be a new episode this Thursday and then the crushing weight of finality descends on me all over again.
> 
> But this story will continue on, as will the love we carry in our fandom hearts.

“Ah, ah, don’t flip it over yet.” Dean held out a hand to stay the approach of the spatula gripped tightly in Jack’s hand. “You wanna get that golden color first, for the perfect grill taste and maximum juiciness.”

Jack lowered the kitchenware in his hand. “It smells ready,” he objected, leaning towards the sizzling patties on the stove and sniffing noisily. “I want to eat it now.”

Dean ruffled the kid’s hair before reaching over to grab his beer bottle from between the trays of prepared hamburger buns sitting on the kitchen counter. “Give it a few more seconds of magic, kid. I told you cooking would help you get your appetite back, there’s nothing better than--” he prodded his thumb at a thin white string draped over the lettuce on one of the bread buns “--what the hell is this?”

“Alfalfa sprouts,” Jack informed him proudly. “Sam taught me that, he says it gives the burgers a little extra crunch--”

“Nuh-uh.” Dean swiped a hand through the air as if erasing Jack’s words. “Do not say _alfalfa_ and _burgers_ in the same sentence, Jack, that’s sacrilege. If you want that stuff ruining your dinner that’s your choice, just keep it away from mine.” He took a swig from the bottle and nodded at the boy who bounced up on his toes, an expectant shine in his eyes. “Okay, okay, it’s done, you can do the honors.”

A plume of steam bloomed from the browned patties as Jack took them off the stove, shrouding him with the scent of grilled meat and mixed spices. Jack carefully placed one in the center of each bun on the tray and then picked up one of the ketchup bottles, squirting a slow, delicate line across the golden meat patty. 

Dean nudged him and motioned to where he was generously slashing mustard and ketchup across his own burger, leaving a criss-cross of dripping red and yellow. At that the boy brightened and loosened his grip on the ketchup bottle, sending little sprays of red sauce flying as he swung his arm back and forth.

“That’s the spirit,” Dean grinned. “Take a bite, you see how it tastes much better when you’ve made it yourself?”

“Mmhmm.” Jack’s eyes widened over the edge of the burger he was munching through. “It’s amazing! It tastes just like the ones you make.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he chuckled, picking up his own burger, “but I’m sure it’s a close second. You’ll see, one day--” the clanging clatter of the bunker door opening turned both of their heads around and the burgers were instantly tossed back down, half eaten and oozing sweet juices onto the abandoned plates.

_Sam_. Dean took him in first, noting how he seemed to be unharmed, and then shifted his gaze over to Castiel, who was equally uninjured but was wearing a strange expression, one Dean had never quite seen before. His shoulders were drooping a little, no doubt still tired from the ordeal Chuck had put him through, but there was an unexplained lightness in the way he looked back at him. Before Sam could open his mouth and explain the questions that were rushing to the forefront of his mind, Dean finally noticed what was wrong.

“Who’s she?” Dean said, pointing to the woman trailing behind his brother and the angel. She was descending the staircase one step at a time, as if she was considering where to land her feet for the first time. Her dark hair fell past her shoulders and she had what looked like a blanket from the back of Castiel’s truck wrapped around her shoulders.

Jack leaned over into Dean’s space. “She’s an angel,” he whispered loudly.

“A what--wait--” his eyes shot back to Castiel and he finally understood the look on his friend’s face. Relief was dawning over the exhausted horizon in his eyes, opening the skies with a tinge of inexplicable hope. “How did--what--” his sentences snapped into half-formed sputters, and Sam was trying to interrupt him fast enough to answer before Jack stepped boldly towards the strange woman.

“Hello,” he beamed, raising his hand up. “I’m--”

“Jack Kline, spawn of Lucifer.” The woman clutched fiercely at the blanket and glowered at him before shifting her eyes up a mere fraction. “Dean Winchester, sword of Michael.”

“I know, we’re famous.” Dean dipped his hand in a mock bow. “And you are--”

“Serafiel.” She shuffled down the last step and walked past Dean’s attempt at a handshake, lifting her head to stare up at the vaulted ceiling of the main room.

“Sara it is.” Dean turned back to Castiel, who set down a heavy bag at the foot of the table and then stood there, eyes glued to every movement of Serafiel going through the room like he was afraid she would disappear if he looked away. He noticed how she made a point of evading Castiel whenever he tried to approach her or address her. She eventually slunk off to the farthest corner of the room and Jack trailed after her, asking if she wanted to try one of his burgers. Sam stepped forward as if to follow him when Dean put out his arm.

“Sam, what the hell happened up there? Did you find the Circle? How is this--this Sara angel--how is she alive?”

Fingers combing through his hair, shoulders rising and falling, a sigh turning the corners of his mouth down-- Dean recognized the telltale signs of his brother and knew a long, messy story was forthcoming. Probably one better shared once everyone had some dinner. “Okay, for now at least tell me you got something on the Circle and that Sara isn’t going to be any trouble.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, we got part of the sigil work. Cas says it’s enough to work with. Serafiel--Sara, she was hiding in the Circle, Cas thinks that's how she escaped Chuck.” They watched her perch on the edge of one of the wooden chairs, taking apart the burger Jack had given her. Her eyebrows were furrowed in concentration as she sniffed each soggy piece of vegetable warily. “She’s a little intense but I don’t think she’s any threat. She’s probably in a bit of shock.”

“I noticed that. Not the friendliest of the choir, is she?” Dean glanced back at Castiel who was offering the angel a glass of water. Or trying to. 

“It will help your vessel feel better,” he said, still wearing that damn hopeful smile.

She whipped her head up, staring daggers at him. _“Castiel.”_ Unlike the rest of them she gave him no other expository title, as if his name itself was judgement enough. 

Castiel placed the glass beside her and took half a step back. “Serafiel, you will be safe here. Our Father cannot hurt us here. I promise.”

She leaned towards him, scrutinizing the bruises on his neck. “You survived him.” The statement was uttered with a complete lack of approval. “I wonder why.”

“I saved him,” Jack spoke up cheerfully, stepping up beside him. “He’s one of my dads.”

Dean was glad that Castiel missed the look of bitter disdain that puckered Serafiel’s mouth because he was busy pulling Jack into a tight embrace and asking him if he was feeling better. Jack was pushing his fingers against the marks on his neck, saying that he could heal them, and Castiel was telling him to save his strength and that there was nothing that could be done. 

“Dean.” Sam’s voice brought him back to the brother at his side.

“What?”

“There’s something else you need to know. Something I found out when we were in Heaven.”

* * *

“...and that’s when we realized that Chuck--God--had been playing us all along. He only cares about his story and because we won’t follow what he’s writing for us he’s-- well, he’s just acting out. He broke thousands of souls out of Hell. He’s destroyed all the other worlds, and that must be why he was in Heaven…” Sam gestured weakly at the angel seated across the table from him, refraining from spelling out the obvious. “But we have enough warding up, he won’t be able to get in here. Again,” he added with an apologetic look at Castiel.

Dean leaned against the entrance to the main room, nursing a bottle of beer in his hand while Sam and Castiel took the lead in explaining everything to the new resident angel. Every now and then Jack had interjected with a helpful comment about how his birth opened a tear in space and time or about having to eat angel hearts to kill Chuck. Serafiel had sat rigidly in her chair, the scowl in her eyes shifting from person to person during the prolonged retelling. By now she had at least relaxed her shoulders a few degrees, and her scathing disdain towards everyone in the room had seemed to simmer down a few degrees. Castiel, however, she still regarded with brimming hostility.

“We recognized his power as soon as he entered Heaven,” Serafiel began coldly when Sam asked her to recall what had happened. “We were overwhelmed with joy. Some of the others went to greet him. I was charged with preparing the throne room for his arrival. Then I started to hear the screams.” Her gaze flicked over to Castiel and Dean saw the ache well up in his eyes.

“I heard them, too,” Castiel said. “How did you know how to activate the circle?”

“I did not. I simply begged the hosts of Heaven to offer me solace, and the circle became visible to me. I had no idea of its existence before.” She frowned at her hands, rubbing her fingertips over her knuckles. “When the screaming stopped I did not know what might await me out there. I thought I would have to hide there for all eternity.”

Castiel reached out a hand to place it on her shoulder, and then stalled as if second guessing the action. “I’m glad we were able to find you,” he said finally, folding his arms on the table.

“So the others. They have all truly perished.” She rubbed her knuckles harder, skin growing taut over the bones. “Except _you_.”

“And me,” Jack piped up. “Well, I’m half angel. And Cas has been teaching me Enochian, but he said my pronunciation needs work.”

A smidgen of curiosity darted across Serafiel’s tightly drawn features and Dean took advantage of the moment to move towards the seated group. “Jack, why don’t you ask Sara to help you with your angel homework, and Sam, see about getting a room set up for her. Cas, I need you to explain this whole circle sigil stuff to me.”

“My name is Serafiel,” he heard a stiff retort behind him and Dean had to hide a smile at the familiar reaction. Behind him Jack was busily explaining the “shortened version of your name” and Sam was asking if she wanted a room at the end or middle of the corridor, to which he heard her reply with “angels don’t sleep.”

“Sounds like someone I used to know,” he chuckled, raising an eyebrow at Castiel who was inspecting the pieces of stone in the open duffel bag.

“She’ll get used to it, like I did.” He traced the jagged lines carved into the fragment in his hand. “This is only the outer layer of sigils. The inner circles were sealed into the seams of Heaven so we weren’t able to remove them. But there should be some books in the library to help us study the design of these sigils and replicate the pattern. It’s a long shot, but it’s a start,” he sighed, looking up.

Dean hated how every time he saw Castiel the horrific blemish of Chuck’s crime was still there, unfaded in their memory. Somehow he had believed that the strangled marks would fade or start to heal, the way a natural injury would. He turned away, walking towards the fridge and taking out two bottles of beer. “Cas, I’m happy that you’re not the only angel anymore, but are you sure we can trust Sara? She doesn’t look very happy to be around any of us.”

He stopped himself short from adding _especially you_.

Castiel took the offered bottle and sat down at one end of the kitchen table. “She only knows about humanity from what Heaven told her. You remember what I was like before I met you,” he smiled faintly.

“I don’t know, Cas, you gotta give yourself some credit. You’ve always been different.” Dean tipped his bottle towards him in salute. “But I guess as long as Chuck is still out there there’s nowhere else for her to go. Maybe eventually we can convince her to join the team.”

The two drank silently for a few moments before Dean lowered his bottle and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He swallowed hard, trying to steady his voice before he began. “Look, we gotta talk about--”

Castiel set his bottle down slowly, shoulders lowered in resignation. “Sam told you.”

“Yeah.” The monosyllabic reply barely constrained the multitudes of emotions that had burst out when Sam had explained to Dean about the deal that Castiel had made and apparently never intended to tell them about.

“You’re angry,” Castiel offered quietly.

He looked up quickly. “Cas, no. I’m not--look, I understand why you did it. You did what any good parent would do for their kid, you stepped in the line of fire to take the hit and protect them. I would’ve done the same if it was Sam. Hell, I have done the same thing.” He could still hear the horror in Sam’s voice from all those years ago, asking _how could you do that_ when he found out about Dean selling his soul to bring him back to life. “I just wish you had told us earlier.”

Castiel shrugged, as if he had gotten used to carrying unspoken pain on his shoulders; as if he had grown so accustomed to putting himself last in line that he didn’t even realize when he needed to be cared for, when others wanted to share the burden with him. “We have bigger problems, Dean, we always have. There was never a good time, especially now.”

“You’re right,” he replied, not missing the surprise crossing his friend’s face at that declaration. “If we don’t win this and we’re all exploded to Chuck knows where, there’s no happiness left for anyone. So we fight this fight first, and we try our damndest to win. But if we do, Cas, if we make it out of this alive, I’m going to find a way to save you.” He looked him in the eyes, putting the weight of his heart behind the next sentence. “And you’re going to let me.”

He refused to break his stare until Castiel nodded minutely. “Okay,” he conceded quietly. “Okay.”

The ivory green edge of their bottles met in a solemn _clink_. “Here’s to what comes after we gank God and his sister--”

A succession of knocking rumbled from outside and the two glanced up in confusion. “Do you have more angel stragglers coming?” Dean mumbled as they hurried over to see Sam already climbing the steps to open the door.

“No, there aren’t any more--Sam, be careful--we don’t know who it could be.” Castiel held out an arm to hold Jack back.

“I don’t think Chuck would knock, Cas. It might be some of the other hunters, I told them they could come here if they needed safety.” The latch slid back at the tug of Sam’s fingers and Dean found himself reaching for the gun in his back pocket, getting ready to defend his home if he needed to.

Sunlight poured through the open shaft as the hinges creaked back and the silhouette of a woman became visible in the light. She smoothed out the silk threads of her golden pantsuit and nodded at Sam, her eyes traveling over to Dean with a smile.

“I’d heard you were looking for me,” she said, her eyes traveling over the arch of the bunker’s walls. “This place. It’s harder to find than I remember."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The queen is finally here! Amara deserved a better ending on the show imo but I absolutely loved her scenes in s15e15 and s15e17.
> 
> Let me know how you think Serafiel might fit into the team dynamic (or if she'll fit in at all).
> 
> Chapter title from ["Hurricane"](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nZcf3oXfz5k) by Fleurie
> 
> Come find me for a follow or chat on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/angelfishofthelord)


	7. someday I'll need your spine to hide behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am sorry, Castiel," Amara said. "I didn’t know my brother was unmaking angels.”
> 
> “Unmaking?” Sam spoke up from beside Jack. “What do you mean? Cas said the other angels were atomized.”
> 
> “Yes, but it’s much more than that. When something or someone is unmade, it never truly disappears. There are traces, so to speak, left behind for eons to come.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter finally explains the title of the story :)

“Amara,” Dean grumbled as Sam sidestepped to let her in and down the stairs. “Took you long enough, where have you been?”

“Jack. It’s good to finally meet you.” His great-aunt looked at him with gentle kindness and extended a hand to him. “I wish it hadn’t taken us this long to meet, but that’s my fault. Maybe we will have time to catch up.”

“I hope so.” Jack made himself smile through the hammering in his heart. With Billie dead he had no idea how he could still regain enough strength to kill Chuck, but either way he knew that their plan for saving the world would always have to include the elimination of both God and His sister. 

“Amara, sister of the Divine, mother of all Darkness.” A clatter of scuffling footsteps followed the breathless proclamation and Jack turned to see Serafiel backpedaling off the staircase, eyes wide as planets. “She has come to carry out His unfinished will.” Something like a breathless cry finished her declaration, prompting Castiel to quickly move to her side.

“Sister, she means no harm,” he tried to reassure her, words that did little to calm the angel when Amara turned to approach them.

“Castiel.” A strange look of horror dawned on her face. “What did my brother do to you?”

A hushed stream of Enochian spilled out from Serafiel as she shut her eyes and grabbed at Castiel’s wrist. Jack understood enough to know that she was praying for deliverance, as if on instinct though she must have known there was nobody listening. Amara seemed not to notice the angel’s spiraling terror; her attention was fixed on the discolored markings on Castiel’s neck. When she touched a finger to the base of his clavicle Jack felt an instinctive pulse of his grace rushing forward, unable to ignore the way Castiel steeled himself not to flinch.

“Can you make that go away?” Dean’s rough voice broke through the tension suffocating the room.

Amara shook her head, dark curls hiding the pain in her eyes. “The scarring runs deep into his true form. I am sorry, Castiel. I didn’t know my brother was unmaking angels.”

“Unmaking?” Sam spoke up from beside Jack. “What do you mean? Cas said the other angels were atomized.”

“Yes, but it’s much more than that. When something or someone is unmade, it never truly disappears. There are traces, so to speak, left behind for eons to come. What happened to the other angels?”

“Chuck, he decimated Heaven. We…” Castiel glanced back at Serafiel whose knuckles were whitening with the tightness of her grip on his wrist. “We are the only ones left.” 

As Castiel continued to explain to Amara what he’d seen in Heaven Jack sidled up next to Serafiel and put a hand on her shoulder. Under his palm he could feel the waves of tremors rolling through her body. “Don't worry,” he smiled warmly. “She isn’t going to hurt you.”

Her head swiveled around, the petrified expression unthawing as if she was noticing Jack’s presence for the first time. “Can you feel it too?” she breathed, seizing his hand. “She is engulfed in the very power to extinguish the light from the stars.”

The words echoed through the room as if spoken through a megaphone and Castiel paused in the middle of a sentence about the Circle. “Serafiel,” he began, turning around only to stop when she stiffened, pressing flatter against the metal staircase railing. 

“Sara, why don’t you and Jack go get us all some coffee,” Sam offered before gesturing to the others around him. “We should probably sit down and talk about all this.” 

“Dean taught me how to work the coffee machine. It’s not as hard as it looks. I like hot chocolate better, though. We could also go and watch something.” Jack kept up a steady stream of chatter as he led Serafiel into the kitchen, noticing how her legs finally stopped wobbling the further they were away from Amara. “They’re probably going to be talking for a long time. Sam helped me download a bunch of new episodes of Clone Wars last night.”

Confusion wrinkled Serafiel’s smooth brow. “I do not recognize this war. However I would be receptive to learning more about it.”

He opened the cupboard door only to swing it shut a moment later, the percussion of opening and closing doors following him as he bustled through the kitchen. “I think Dean tried to hide the last bag of Twizzlers,” Jack said by way of explanation to the puzzled angel at his side. “But I think you’ll like them.”

“Angels don’t need to eat.” Serafield paused, as if debating the veracity of the statement before adding, “although lack of need does not negate the ability to experiment with these flavors.”

Jack temporarily abandoned his search for the last bag of Twizzlers for a Snickers bar he found in the back of one of the drawers. Before biting into the stringy confection he offered it to Serafiel, who shook her head and continued sniffing a pack of coffee grounds that was left out on the counter. “I recall this odor,” she informed him. “When I first took this vessel after The Great Fall she was incapicitated from below her neck. I, too, had been gravely injured in the fall, so I spent most of that period recovering in her vessel. She only received one visitor who frequently drank a beverage that smelled like this.”

“Did you help her get better?”

Serafiel pushed her nose deeper into the golden plastic of the coffee bag. “I did, shortly before the gates of Heaven were re-opened. But by then the visitor had long ceased their visitations. I do not believe she has anyone awaiting her return home.” She paused, her trembling hands gripping the bag a little too tightly and Jack heard the last, unspoken part of that sentence: _just like me._

Before Jack could think of what to say in response his attention was turned to the snatches of conversation drifting in from outside, speech bubbles blown up and elongated from heightened emotions. 

_“So you were planning to kill me?”_

_“We were going to save the world!”_

Dean’s voice. Red and brimming with fire.

_“It’s about balance, Amara. If we take Chuck out you have to go, too, otherwise everything collapses.”_

Sam. Strained patience looping through the white.

_“I know he is your family. But it must be done.”_

Castiel. Blue, rushing quiet and wounded.

_“...he’s snapping universes out of existence, he killed all the angels, you know that this world is next!”_

Dean again. Panic colored black in desperation.

_“He didn’t kill them, he unmade them. They still exist in an atomic capacity.”_

Amara. Her words echoed with a rust-colored grime of wisdom and regret.

“I never found opportunity to taste the beverage that accompanied this scent. You said you knew the workings of a machine that could construct it?” Serafiel handed the bag over to Jack tentatively. 

_They still exist..._

An idea dawned on Jack and he left Serafiel momentarily to rush into the main room, not noticing how they all immediately quieted down as soon as he entered. “What if you unmade him?” he blurted out, facing Amara who was sitting at the head of the table. “You have the power, right? You can do what he does.”

“You want me to unmake my own brother?” A thin laugh puckered her lips. “Seriously?”

“Hold on, listen to what he’s saying. If you unmake Chuck, that wouldn’t count as killing him...” Sam stalled between words, as if trying to figure out where the numbers added and subtracted into each other. “Then there would be no need to kill you since the balance would be maintained because--”

“He would still exist in some way,” Amara finished. “Not in any way where he could hurt anyone, though. But you have no idea what you’re asking me to do, Jack, do you?” Her eyes landed on him now, but he didn't see her. 

All he could see was Castiel writhing in Chuck’s grip.

Blood vessels bursting. 

Skin boiling. 

Bones splintering.

The squelch of organs rupturing and screams crumbling to ashes.

“I do,” Jack managed faintly. “I watched it happen.” 

Everyone followed his line of sight to where Castiel was sitting, except Amara who simply closed her eyes.

“Look, I know you feel--” Dean started, but she shook her head, standing up in one fluid motion.

“You don’t know. You can’t even begin to understand who-- _what_ we are. What unmaking him would do to him. To _me._ ” Her fingers smoothed out the creases in her suit jacket and she moved as if to leave but then paused. “But if you are serious about trapping him, I still can take a look at that Circle.”

* * *

Soft cotton strands brushed against Jack’s cheek as a trickle of voices filtered into his waking mind. 

_“Coffee? I like drinking that sometimes too.”_

_“I find the flavor to be warm.”_

Light moved across his closed eyelids and he dimly remembered falling asleep somewhere after the opening credits of the first episode of season two. His toes prodded against something warm and solid. _Serafiel?_ His grace hummed in response to her presence, telling him she was still seated on the bed and the thought drifted through his grogginess that she might have finished the season without him.

Someone else hovered near, tucking the corner of fabric around his shoulders. Gold ribbons flared through his chest in a warmth of fireworks. _Castiel._ He kept his eyes closed, relaxing to the lullaby of his father’s grace as he moved around the room.

“He needs to sleep because of his human side.” That was Castiel talking. “His mother was human. Her name was Kelly Kline.” A pause. “She was a brave and wonderful woman.”

_Mother._ Visions flowed through him: visions of her smile, her eyes bright with love for him, her voice cradling him close. The current of pastel memories almost carried him back to blissful dreams when the sharpness of Serafiel’s voice washed him back ashore.

“You were present for the birth of this nephilim? And you did not destroy him?”

“I know what we were taught about nephilim, Serafiel. But I’ve learned--” the muted scrape of a chair, Castiel probably sitting down “--that it’s never as black and white as it seems. Sometimes you just need to have faith, even in the seemingly impossible.”

“Faith?” A short, bitter laugh. More like a sneer. “Our Father would see us dismembered and you speak of holding fast to belief?”

“Not in Him. I believe in people, in the good that they do and the love they have for each other.” 

“Humanity. You chose them over us.” There was less bitterness now. Almost longing. “You left us.”

A longer pause. “I went against Heaven’s will because they were trying to end the world. I didn’t want to-” his words drifted off, growing distant. “I had to choose, but I never wanted to stop being part of--” The clearing of his throat. Another pause. “Serafiel, you know I have no intention to harm you, right? I am not...I am not your enemy.”

Silence. 

“I understand if you hate me,” he added quietly. “I won’t deny what you must have heard about me.”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t know you, Castiel. I see that now. What you told me about the happenings of Earth are vastly different to what Heaven said. We were supposed to be beings of divine truth, but now I realize that we have only ever been emissaries of lies.” The blankets beside Jack rustled, as if Serafiel was pulling it up to her knees. “Our Father left us eons ago. Our elder brothers fought to the point of annihilation. We fell. We lost our wings. We killed each other in civil wars.” The words stumbled over each other’s feet, all at once muffled and deafening. “We have not been angels for too long.”

“I know.”

Again the blanket stretched, lines tightening. Perhaps she was tugging it closer to her chest. “There’s nowhere for us to go, Castiel. There is no purpose to our being. We are the last children unwanted by our father. We are the scars of our species. Our existence is merely a punishment.” 

In the quiet following her verdict Jack thought that maybe Castiel wouldn’t reply. He had nearly fallen asleep when he heard him speak, his voice aching with tenderness. “Your life is not a punishment, sister. It is yours and yours alone. You get to choose what to do with it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ["Lost"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK9wqtAwnoE) by Dermot Kennedy 
> 
> For a second when Chuck killed Michael in 15x19 I thought he was "unmaking" him :P I do love the finger-snap method of eliminating someone but I also think that there should be more intricate ways of killing someone--sorry this is my writer brain speaking.
> 
> We're more than halfway through the fic now! Any predictions/things you'd like to see before the story ends?


	8. the cracks that riddle me like fault lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel nodded. “You have every reason not to want to unmake him. It’s something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. No matter what he’s done, he is still your family.”
> 
> “My twin.” Amara glanced down as she picked up the coffee mug again. “I would probably feel it as it happened, too. The way it must have hurt him when he locked me up.”
> 
> “Would you rather lock him up? We tried to do that before, and it failed. But maybe you could help us figure out another way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who is reading this fic! I didn't expect it to be enjoyed by so many other people, you are all giving me so much happiness.
> 
> Also if you want to read another awesome s15 fix-it with a focus on Cas and Jack go over to my friend and tireless beta reader [alpacamybags](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacamybags/pseuds/alpacamybags) and read her new multichapter work!
> 
> Note: some dialogue quoted from 11x10 and 8x21.

Sigils ran through the back of his eyelids like blots of ink soaking into tissue paper. Castiel shut the heavy leather bound book in front of him and massaged his temples slowly. He knew that he shouldn’t feel tired, but after two days of relentless research defeat was taking on the form of physical exhaustion. At least Amara had agreed to stay and help where she could. She and Sam figured out that the sigil pieces from Heaven were inscribed on a material most similar in composition to slate. They had found a mountain in Chile where a decade ago a slate rock mine had collapsed, with rumors from locals calling it an “act of God.”

“You think someone found another hand or little finger of God?” Dean had asked. “How do some broken rocks help us?”

“Better power conduit,” Castiel had answered, without looking up from the patterns he was scribbling down. “We don’t have the power of Heaven behind our Circle, we’ll need all the boosters we can get.” Amara had returned earlier that morning, and faint echoes of clanging had been resounding from the basement for hours now. Dean had insisted on letting him and Jack break up the giant slabs of rock “with a friggin hammer” because “I need to do something useful and you guys haven’t figured out all the sigils yet anyways, so don’t you go mojo-ing this away for me.”

He could hear Sam in the kitchen making lunch, and he knew Serafiel was still in her room, huddled around the laptop Jack had lent her. Castiel checked on her every now and then, sometimes with an Enochian text or ancient script to ask her about. At first she had seemed interested in helping but the moment she realized they were trying to make a trap for Chuck here, in the Bunker, she had refused to even look at the papers. All of his reassurances only made her curl deeper into the thick covers until she was almost cowering behind them.

Castiel understood her fear. It was the same emotion he refused to let himself indulge in. 

His hand slipped down from his forehead, fingertips bumping against his throat. The harsh colors ruining his skin didn’t feel like anything under his touch, but every time someone looked at him their gaze was drawn to it, like it had replaced all of other features. Like it had eyes to stare back at them.

“It’s strange, you know.” Amara entered the room, looking anywhere but at him and yet he knew exactly what she was talking about. “I can see my brother’s imprint in it. What happened to you--” her eyes traveled down to the incriminating spot “--must have taken something out of him as well.” The coffee mug in her hand landed gracefully between the piles of books on the table and she pulled out a chair beside him. “I don’t quite understand, though. Why he would go through all that trouble.”

_Blue eyes. You aren’t even worth the effort._

Castiel pushed his heels against the side of the chair, willing himself not to shift away. Amara was different when she said those words to him all those years ago.

He was different then, too.

_No offense, but you look a bit used up._

He tried not to think about her hand pushing against his chest, branding his vessel with a blistering warning. She was looking at him now with that same blend of wonder and curiosity in her eyes as back then.

_Why God took a special interest in you I’ll never understand._

“There were less than a dozen angels in Heaven when he unmade them,” Castiel said aloud to drown out the noise of the rising quiet. “You said their essence remains in some way, right? Maybe like blueprints. Maybe he wants to use them when he recreates the earth.”

“Less than a dozen?”

“Our numbers have been dwindling,” he replied evenly. 

“Blueprints? Huh.” She leaned back, resting her hands on the table. “I didn’t think he was sentimental like that. Not with the way he’s been wiping out the other worlds. But then you are his first children. I think he was quite proud of the result.”

“I doubt that.” The smile on his face felt hollow and yet he lifted his head to greet her with it.

There was something else in her eyes. He hadn't noticed it when he had too been too timid to face her before. She wasn’t scrutinizing him with hardness, but with a soft strain of sympathy. “What did my brother say to you?”

He swallowed through a forest of glass in his throat. “That he was going to make a better me. One that was less damaged. He said we were all mistakes.”

“No one could improve on you, Castiel. Maybe he was just jealous of that.” A hint of pride and amusement warmed her voice as she took a sip of coffee. “I think he never could quite predict what you were going to do.”

_You have never done what you were told, not completely._

_Honestly I think you came off the line with a crack in your chassis._

Naomi’s rebuke came back with a repressed shudder and he remembered that she was dead. Again. The knowledge somehow coursed through him with an unexplained pang of grief as another thought came to mind. “You said that the unmaking doesn’t kill whoever is--does that mean the other angels can still feel--are they still aware of their atomized state?”

“No. When someone is unmade, and the process is completely finished, only the barest trace of them would be left. Their soul, or their consciousness, would be long gone.” She raised her eyebrows slightly. “You know, it’s something I always knew was possible for him--for us--to do, but I never thought he would actually go through with it. He never has before. It’s just so...” she shook her head minutely, “...long and cruel and unnecessary, really.”

“I know.” He hadn’t realized he was touching his neck again until he felt her fingers cupped over his. Her eyes met his, colored with a tenderness he hadn’t expected.

“I need to know,” she said quietly and he understood what she was asking before she finished. It was a question not to torment him, but to prepare herself for the possibility. “Do you remember what it felt like?”

He had been trying very hard not to.

Her fingers so close to his neck should have triggered a full body flinch, but instead he felt a sense of calm. The power she radiated wasn’t a threat; rather it acted as a shield, fiercely protective. The knot in his throat loosened strand by strand. “I was awake for all of it. Jack told me it was a few minutes for them, maybe less, but to me it was….” he looked away. “I could feel everything coming apart, individually and all at once. My grace, my vessel, breaking cell by cell. The pain, it was---” he stopped. 

“It was infinite,” she whispered, unshed tears pooling in her eyes.

He nodded. “You have every reason not to want to do it to him. It’s something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. No matter what he’s done, he is still your family.”

“My twin.” Her hand retreated and she picked up the coffee mug again. “I would probably feel it as it happened, too. The way it must have hurt him when he locked me up.”

“Would you rather lock him up? We tried to do that before, and it failed. But maybe you could help us figure out another way.”

The dark liquid almost sloshed over the edge as she set the cup down quickly. “No, I couldn’t do that. It’s as bad as unmaking him. I know that agony well. At least--at least in a way, the unmaking has a beginning and end. Being locked away...” A shadow stole over her face and she blinked, galaxies swimming in her eyes. “Imprisonment is truly forever.”

The neon of the overhead lights glinted off the silk strands of her pantsuit sleeve. Castiel could feel the air itself bowing to the symphony of the resonance within her. He remembered that she wasn’t simply a woman, or a sister, or even a divine being, but a heartbeat of the universe itself, one whose very breath coincided with the cadence of all creation.

“Chuck,” he suddenly spoke without realizing it. “He’s omnipotent, he can see--does he know what we’re doing?”

“Probably. But as long as I’m here he can only see what I want him to. He knows you’re trying to rebuild the Circle, but he won’t know if you succeed. Or if I do choose to unmake him.”

“Will you?”

She turned, those endless brown eyes staring into him. “Would you?”

“Here you go.” Dean’s pounding footsteps intercepted the conversation as he marched into the room with an armful of fist-sized stone pieces. Behind him Jack followed with another pile that he dumped next to the heap Dean unloaded. “Is that going to be enough for the--” he twirled a finger in the air “--circles in circles?”

“It should be. We haven’t figured out the innermost sigils yet but I can start working on the outer rings.” Castiel unfolded a large piece of paper and pointed to the markings circled in red. “The sigils need to be drawn in celestial light, copied precisely. One stroke out of order and the Circle won’t hold.”

“Celestial light? Are you going to make them glow in the dark?” Dean dusted his hands clean and patted Jack on the shoulder. “Great job on the rock smashing by the way. I think we better clean up the dungeon though, or Sam’s gonna have a fit.”

“Why would I have a fit?” Sam strolled in from the kitchen, balancing several plates with sandwiches in both hands. “Cas, I was thinking about the pattern for the inner sigi--oh, wow--” he took in the miniature mountain of slate pieces on the table “--you have to mark all of these in your blood?”

Dean held up a finger. “What the what now?” 

“Celestial light,” Castiel repeated, as if it hadn’t been eminently clear before. “This should be enough, but if we need more you and Jack can always--”

“What about Sara, why can’t she help draw the sigils?" Dean interrupted. "You’re just gonna bleed out all on your own?”

Castiel barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. “I won’t bleed out, this vessel has more than enough blood to write three hundred twenty-four sigils and maintain its health.”

Jack bobbed up and down on his heels. “I can help! I’ve been studying some of the library books with Sam this morning and I’m pretty good at sigil work now. Well, I’m getting better,” he added with a quick glance over at Sam.

“Yeah, the kid is as celestial as they come, so it should work right?” Dean asked.

“We can try,” Castiel said, giving in to the eagerness spreading across Jack’s face. 

“Greetings. I regret to inform you that I require assistance.” They all turned to see Serafiel standing woodenly at the side of the hallway, a laptop held out in her arms like a cadaver. “The device I was viewing the animated storytelling on unexpectedly became deceased.”

“I’ll get you a charger in a minute,” Sam chuckled, pulling out a chair beside Castiel. “These sandwiches are going to get soggy if you don’t eat them, guys. And yes, Dean, yours is sprout-free.”

“How kind of you, Sammy,” Dean grinned. “I’ll go make some more coffee. Amara, do you want a refill?”

“Only if you make it Irish.” She rose from her seat, mug clutched in one hand, but before she passed the table Castiel turned slightly towards her and lowered his head.

“I wouldn’t do it,” he said under his breath. Looking at the faces of those around him--Sam, Dean, Jack, Serafiel--he knew that he would never be able to unmake any of them, no matter the danger they posed to humanity. He would let them rage, a hurricane force, and stand there as a toothpick in the gale believing he could convince them to change course. “I would rather let them destroy me first.”

A glimmer rose in her eyes and Amara pressed a hand to his shoulder, squeezing it gently before walking on to the kitchen.

Castiel sat back down and started to pull the first shard of rock towards him. But then he saw the gusto that Jack was hungrily munching through his sandwich with; Dean, trying to discreetly pass his flask to Amara even as Sam chided him about it; and Serafiel, curiously picking up the sandwich and taking a tiny bite from the side as if waiting for it to bite back. 

“The molecules taste crunchy,” she informed him soberly.

His face brightened as she pulled out a chair to sit beside him and he took the plate she passed to him with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ["The Curve of Earth"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBj9XGUzEn4) by Snow Patrol.
> 
> I know Dean and Amara have a connection in the show but I wanted to explore her and Cas' dynamic, especially given their previous encounter and her relation to him as a celestial aunt of sorts? Let me know your thoughts about it.
> 
> Also come by my [tumblr](https://angelfishofthelord.tumblr.com/) to hang out!


	9. take an angel by the wings, time to tell her everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What about Sara?” Dean asked.
> 
> “Sara doesn’t want to be anywhere near Chuck, much less stand there and try to trap him. She’s still terrified from what happened in Heaven.”
> 
> “So? Aren’t we all scared?” Dean snagged the cereal box again, aggressively shaking it until a flurry of yellow circles tumbled into his palm. “Jack was killed by Chuck before, and Cas, he--look, we’re all showing up with our knees shaking, but we’re showing up. We need all the power we can get. You should talk to her about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue quoted from 5x21, 8x23, 9x11, 10x23, and 13x23.

_ Three hundred and twenty one… _ Sam hovered a finger over the triangular rock balanced on the bottom of the bookshelf ledge. Beside it sat two more oblong-shaped pieces, each painted with a mark of faded blood. Every marking differed slightly, a minute variation of the intersecting loop that crossed like a figure eight with a line running through and over it.

_ Three hundred twenty-two, twenty-three- _ -he glanced up at the spine of an Enochian dictionary that was pulled halfway out to accommodate the seat of another jagged rock.  _ Three hundred twenty-four. _

“Wow, they really did stay up all night finger painting.” Rubbing the sleep from his eyes Dean wandered into the main room, tugging the strings of his gray robe around his waist. He lifted his legs up in a high-knee march to side-step the winding maze of rocks laid out across the floor, table, chairs, and climbing the bookshelves.

“Yeah, I just sent Jack to bed, he was falling asleep on the table.” Sam carefully avoided stepping on the stones as he made his way over to join his brother in the kitchen. “Three hundred twenty-four sigils, just like Cas said. Sara said she’s never seen such extensive sigil work before.”

The fridge door closed behind Dean as he pulled out a bottle of milk. He opened it and sniffed it warily before setting it down with a shrug. “Sara helped them? Ah, I knew she’d come around in the end.”

Sliding into the bench at the kitchen table, Sam stretched out his legs with a yawn. “No, she was just there to compare the war strategies of the generals in Clone Wars with the archangels. Apparently she and Cas found a lot of similarities between the clones and the way angels were created and trained, even though Cas hasn’t actually seen the show. He said that Jack and Sara explained it to him while they were working, and I told him that’s not the same as actually--”

“Aw, Sammy, did you miss the nerd discussion?” Dean opened a box of cereal and popped a cornflake into his mouth. “Don’t worry, there’ll be time later for you and the angels to start your AV club.”

“I doubt that,” he grinned faintly. “The sigils are done, we just need to assemble the Circle. Cas says it can be ready tomorrow.” Sam bowed his head, running his fingers through the knotted strands of his hair. A dull throbbing pounded behind his eyes, one that hadn’t relented over the past few days. He didn’t know whether to chalk it up to lack of sleep; the fact that he hadn’t been able to keep up his exercise routine; or that this was their third attempt to try and stop the God of the universe.

He preferred to tell himself it was the lack of exercise. Somehow there was comfort in holding on to small trivialities in this midst of their cosmic struggle. Besides, jogging down the road and past the empty fields outside the bunker had always refreshed him; he missed being able to go outside without the fear of being snapped out of existence. If they made it out of this alive he was going to go out running the first morning they woke up free and with lives unwritten. Maybe he could even go all around the lake for once.

“Amara still hasn’t given us her word about the whole unmaking thing.” Dean took a seat across from him, still digging into the cereal box and munching on dry flakes. “Do you think she’ll agree to that, or do we set the trap just for her to try and reason with him?”

“I don’t know.” The aching pulse spiked again and he pushed his thumbs against his forehead. “I don’t know if the Circle is even going to work.”

“You okay, Sam?”

His hands dropped to the table, a grim smile hooked over his tightened jaw. “Are any of us? We have one chance to save the world or watch it be destroyed and if it doesn’t work…” a litany of faces flickered through his mind: Eileen, Jody, Claire, Donna, Bobby, Charlie-- “we won’t even have time to say goodbye.”

The remaining cereal in the box rustled as Dean set it aside and leveled his gaze on him. “Hey we've been playing this busted-up card our whole lives, Sammy. When have the odds ever been on our side? We’re gonna throw our best shot at this and if it goes up flames, well, at least we did our damndest to give everyone a fighting chance.”

It was the same formula of hope and insanity that they’d armed themselves with all their lives, in every battle they’d bled and fought before. Sam had no idea how this final war would end, but Dean’s words reminded him that as long as they were walking up to the frontline with people who carried the torch of faith and love as high and bright as ever, it didn’t matter what Chuck did. He could never decide their ending. It would always be their own.

“Okay,” he nodded, straightening up. The headache was still there but its volume seemed to fade a little. “I talked to Rowena about the spell I found. It’ll draw on our souls but won’t cause any permanent damage. And it won’t drain it all either, just enough to help power the Circle. Us two, combined with Cas and Jack using their angel power, should be enough to--”

“What about Sara?”

Sam rolled his shoulders back with a sigh. “Sara doesn’t want to be anywhere near Chuck, much less stand there and try to trap him. She’s still terrified from what happened in Heaven.”

“So? Aren’t we all scared?” Dean snagged the cereal box again, aggressively shaking it until a flurry of yellow circles tumbled into his palm. “Jack was killed by Chuck before, and Cas, he--look, we’re all showing up with our knees shaking, but we’re showing up. Why can’t she? We need all the power we can get, Sam. You should talk to her about it.”

“You don’t think I’ve tried? Cas came in and almost begged me to let her be. He kept saying she’s made her choice and it’s true, Dean. We chose this life,” he gestured around them, as if noting the fact that they were having breakfast in an underground bunker. “She didn’t. She finally gets to choose what she wants to do for the first time in thousands of years--”

“And she chooses to sit on the sidelines and watch Netflix?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” He shook his head. “Cas said--”

“He’s mother-henning her,” Dean snapped, getting up to grab the bottle of milk. “You see it, don’t you? The way he’s so protective of her, he’s completely gone into--”

“Big brother mode? Believe me, Dean, I know what that looks like,” Sam grinned. “I’ve suffered through it all my life.”

“Jerk,” Dean muttered into the milk bottle.

“Bitch.”

Sam hesitated as Dean returned to the table, this time with a bowl and spoon. “I also asked Rowena about the other spell,” he began hesitantly.

Dean immediately stopped pouring the cereal into the bowl. “Please tell me she can make it work.”

Sam lowered his eyes and Dean swore under his breath.

“Really? She got the freaking Mark of Cain off me, and she can’t remove a little divine bruising?”

“I tried, I’ve searched all the books. Maybe if we destroy Chuck it’ll disappear, but then Amara said it scarred his true form, that means it’s part of him. Rowena said any spell to remove it would end up hurting him much more than those bruises do.”

Between looking up sigil patterns for the Circle Sam had been going through the Book of the Damned and Rowena’s notes, trying to find something to remove the ghastly bruises on Castiel’s neck. They hadn’t healed at all, colored as dark and brutal as the day they were made. 

“It can’t--he doesn’t deserve to live the rest of his life with that-” Dean brushed a finger to his own neck “--he shouldn’t have to see that every day. Or ever.” He dropped a hand over his face. “I gotta be honest, Sam, it’s almost hard to look at him, sometimes, you know, because then I remember what happened and--”

“I know.” In the quiet moments between working on the sigils Sam had sometimes thought about what it would be like for Castiel every time he left the bunker; the unasked for sympathy and questions he would be subject to; the stares from the curious and concerned; how the memory of his Father’s violence would be an ever-present companion. “I’ll keep looking, okay, there’s going to be something out there that works.”

He knew that they both knew there was nothing. The lie numbed his tongue a little, that’s all.

Footsteps echoed from outside and the two looked up to see Castiel coming into the kitchen, hands in his coat pockets and traces of fatigue around his smile. “Jack’s asleep,” he began, nodding towards Sam. “Amara seems to be coming around to the idea of unmaking Chuck. I just talked with her. We also figured out a way to summon him into the Circle.”

“See, Sammy? It’s all coming together.” The milk sloshed as Dean raised the bottle in a toast. “So what’s the game plan?”

Leaning against the silver kitchen countertop, Castiel brought a hand halfway up to his neck. “Me.”

“What do you mean?” Sam could hear the panic Dean was carefully reigning in from his words.

“The bruises, they carry some of Chuck’s fingerprints. She said she can see particles of him in them. So if she touches it, it will work as a magnetic pull to bring him down right where we want him.”

Sam reached instinctively for his left shoulder. “Like how the bullet from the equalizer connected me and Chuck?”

Castiel nodded. “Amara just needs to start the process again and it will immediately call out to Chuck, wherever he is.”

“What process?” Dean frowned.

“The--” Castiel moved his hand closer to his neck and Sam almost flinched.

_ No. _

“Just for a moment, she’ll need to--”

“Wait a minute--”

_ No. _

“She’s not going to go through with it, Dean, it’s just for a second--”

“No.” The word finally broke from Sam’s throat, crashing through the air like a wrecking ball. “We’re not going to let her torture you _ for a moment. _ No. Cas, you can’t let her, or anyone, start unmaking you.”

“You’re going to let her unmake you?” Dean was shouting now.

Castiel shut his eyes with a little huff of frustration and put out a pacifying hand. “Not unmake me, just start the process to get Chuck down. I don’t see why you’re--”

“Amara!” Dean tilted his head back, raising a fist as he hollered. “Get in here, I swear to--”

“God?” Amara abruptly appeared in the kitchen, arms folded and eyebrows raised. “That’d be a bit ironic, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t you dare lay a finger on Cas,” Dean snapped, wagging a finger high. “I don’t care what you told him--”

She raised an eyebrow in the angel’s direction. “It was his idea, actually. He’s smarter than you give him credit for.”

_ No. _ The word became small again, a dagger piercing between the ribs. Sam stared helplessly at Castiel, who looked so painfully calm. Resigned. This must have been how he looked to Dean, Sam realized, that time when he wanted to go back into the Cage and talk to Lucifer to find a way to defeat the Darkness. It was a serenity that belied the overwhelming trepidation.

“If you have any other ideas, I’m all ears,” Amara added, before walking over to the kitchen table and picking up the cereal box.

“Cas, how could you be okay with this?” Dean was overflowing, a cauldron of fear and desperation bubbling over the edge.

“Dean. This is the only way.”

“That’s crap and you know it. There’s always another way. What about--” he spun around to face Amara who was sitting on the table, one leg draped over the other and nibbling at cornflakes. “Why would you agree to this? You want to get rid of Cas, is that it?”

“Don’t think that you know me, Dean,” Amara chided with thinly cloaked ire. “I know the agony of the unmaking, I would never want to put anyone through that again. When Castiel came to me I refused at first, of course I wouldn’t hurt him. But there’s very little that’s strong enough to summon my brother, and if I’m going to unmake him I need him to be right there, in the middle of the Circle.”

Dean stopped. “Wait, so you’re really going to do it?”

Amara glanced at Castiel with a soft shade of pain. “It’s the only way,” she repeated quietly

_ When Castiel came to me… _ A knot thickened in Sam’s throat as he thought of Castiel, mustering up the courage to go Amara and tell her of his plan, to ask her to inflict on him the worst agony ever suffered yet again and trusting her to stop before it obliterated him. Maybe it had been that willingness to stand bodily in the midst of burning fire that had convinced Amara to walk into the furnace with them.

“Alright, but maybe we can use something else to get him here, he’s weak from his injury right? Missing a hand and all that. Can’t we use a spell or something combined with your power to--”

Amara held up a hand. “What is he missing?”

“Jack cut off his hand.” Sam heard himself saying. “When he attacked Cas.”

“You didn’t tell me that, you just said Jack blasted him away. But cutting off his hand? That’s an injury to his very being.” She pressed chin against her fingers, pausing thoughtfully. “That must be why he hasn’t made any new moves. He’s recovering.”

“Is that a good thing?” Dean ventured.

“For us, yes.” Amara turned to face Castiel who was still standing by the counter with a unfazed expression. “Perhaps I wouldn’t have to re-start the process; we would just have to power up the Circle and my brother might come.”

Sam stood up slowly. He felt like someone had finally dragged him out from the bottom of an ocean and his lungs were now emptied of water, enough to let him speak. “You won’t have to hurt Cas?” he spoke cautiously, as if daring to be contradicted.

“I never  _ wanted _ to hurt him,” Amara repeated. “But yes, my brother should be drawn to the power of the Circle if he’s hurt and nursing his wounds right now. It’ll be like a man in a desert seeing a glass of water. It’ll be,” the corner of her mouth lifted slightly, “almost instinctive. Near irresistible.”

“Okay, we’ll do that.” Dean rolled an eye over to Castiel and stabbed a finger towards him. “Don’t you go throwing yourself on grenades anymore. Don’t you dare.”

Castiel looked narrowly at Dean, a spark of anger lighting the blue in his eyes. “Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I wanted to experience that again? I knew exactly what I was asking her to do. It was not an impulsive decision, it was a calculated strategy. So we could have a chance to win this. Isn’t that what you want, too? Wouldn’t you do the same?”

Sam glanced over at Dean and their eyes met.

_ What if you guys lead the Devil to the edge and I jump in? _

_ Look how close we are! Other people will die if I don’t finish this! _

_ Spare me the warning label, you had me at ‘kill the bitch.’ _

_ Make the spell happen, whatever it takes, please. _

_ What if you had your sword? I am your sword. _

“Sam.” Castiel’s clipped voice interrupted his mental rewind of their history of recklessness. “I need your help warding Sara’s room. Do you have the spellwork from Rowena ready?”

“Yeah, of course, let’s do that.” He moved away from Dean who remained standing there, silently, eyes pinned to the ground. There wasn’t anything else to say when they both knew Castiel had witnessed them walk up to the very same edge of the cliff he had. He had been there before in the same place Sam and Dean were now, furious and confused and begging them not to trade their lives away for the sake of a chance at victory.

And what’s worse was Sam knew that, given the opportunity, they would both do the same again.

* * *

When the last stroke was painted, Sam took a few steps back to admire their handiwork. The walls of Serafiel’s room were now adorned with a black and red tapestry of Enochian, Latin, and Celtic sigils.

“Will she be safe in here?” Castiel asked from the other side of the room where he stood beside the dresser, wiping his hands on a wet rag.

“She should be. This is the best we’ve got.” Sam carefully put the spray bottle down on the dresser and turned around. “Cas, you know we aren’t mad at you. We were worried, of course, but what you did--what you offered to do, I know that wasn't easy, and…” he took a step forward, searching for Castiel’s eyes in the shadows. “That took a lot of courage.”

“It wasn’t that hard when I thought of the alternative.” He moved through the room slowly, avoiding Sam’s gaze. “Losing you, all of you. That isn’t something I’m willing to accept.”

“You’re afraid.” It came out like a confession, an envelope marked with the wrong name. 

_ I’m afraid. _ The spike behind his sinuses came back, and Sam finally knew what label to give it. 

It was terror, building from every bludgeon they received from an almighty, all-knowing antagonist who had been laying his fist against the bulwark of their lives even before they were born.

It was the quietly growing knowledge that they might disappear like a thought and all the deaths they had died and lives sacrificed and years of literal Hell would become nothing but a petty God’s afterthought.

Castiel looked up briefly, but before Sam could say anything the door to the room burst open and Serafiel came storming in, eyes glowing like emeralds.

“How could you do that?” The accusation came in hurtling in like a tornado, the hem of her coat twirling behind as she charged forward. Her left arm shifted, a silver blade sliding down her sleeve and between her fingers.

Sam instinctively shot a look at Castiel, waiting for him to draw his own blade. To defend himself. But he just stood and stared. A familiar look of defeat graced his expression. 

_ “Serafiel,” _ was the only thing he uttered to save himself, hands barely raised halfway up.

She waved the blade in her hand too easily, a weight that she almost seemed unaware of. “Dean told me of your plan. How could you let yourself commit such an act? You know it will come to naught!”

_ Oh.  _ Midway through moving across the room to place himself firmly between Castiel and his sibling Sam stopped. The bright flush on her pale face, the wildness roaming across her green eyes, the slight waver in her step--this wasn’t anger. This was the wrath of fear.

“I’m not going to do that anymore--we’re just going to power up the Circle and he’ll come. We have to do it to give Amara the chance to unmake him.” He glanced at Sam. “I don’t ask you to join us, though. We’ve warded your room,” he nodded in a circle, gesturing to the walls around them.“You’ll be safe until it’s over.”

“The very act of you being in the presence of our Father is unacceptable. How could you--you. _. _ You  _ chose _ this.” She crossed the room, pointing the arrow of the blade forward even as her hand shook even more noticeably. Sam shuffled his legs further along in what he hoped were discrete movements, trying to reach Castiel before she did. “Our Father targeted you when he attacked last time. Not these humans. He is on a mission to eradicate our kind, and you would walk out and face him again with nothing but half-assembled sigils and the last hope from a prayer.”

“Of course it’s dangerous, but if we don’t--”

“They were right, Castiel,” she cut in sharply. “What they said about you in Heaven.”

Castiel lowered his hands. They lay flat at his side, accepting whatever would come next.

“They said you were dangerous. Terrifying. Maybe not the first time you rebelled, but certainly after the civil war with Raphael. After you broke free from Naomi. After your actions caused the angels to fall.” Her teeth barred as her voice rose, shrill and ricocheting off the walls of the room. “After you allowed Lucifer to possess you. After you sheltered a nephilim. After--”

“I know what I have done, Sara,” Castiel said firmly. Sam wished he could tell him that nothing she said was true. They were wrong.

“But they were wrong.”

Sam whipped his head up when he heard Serafiel speak those exact words.

“They were wrong that your actions made you dangerous.” Her lips were fumbling, frantic breaths escaping between the words. “What made you terrifying was _ why _ you committed those crimes. I see it now, Castiel, I know what I could not before. I have watched you these past few days, I have spoken to these humans you claim as your own.”

The tip of her blade hovered at the lapel of his trench coat and Sam held his breath.

“Everything you did, against the laws of Heaven, against the will of our brothers, against our family, has been for love. Love for these people, love to protect them.”

Castiel lifted his eyes slowly, pain scattered across his face.

“This love has killed you. Not once, not twice, but over and over. You have gone to Hell, to Purgatory, to endless torture at the hands of your own. You have been torn apart, you have been possessed, your Grace has been stolen and poisoned. You have been broken time and time again. Yet you still put yourself at the front of the fire without thinking, without--”

Her face twisted, swollen and pulsing. 

It took Sam a moment to realize that Serafiel was crying. 

She seemed to not understand what was happening, her fingers reaching uncertainly to touch the tears racing down her cheeks. Her eyes fell to the blade in her hand as if wondering where it should land. For a moment she stilled, looking first to Sam and then back at Castiel. 

Then her face crumpled and she let go of the blade. It clattered to the ground, spinning shiny flickers of light as she grabbed fistfuls of Castiel’s coat in her hands. “How could you?” she repeated, shaking him back and forth, and Sam heard what she was saying now.

Not a rebuke. A plea.

“How could you love others so much and yourself so little? How could you be so…” she jerked him forward, her swimming eyes searching his. “How could you be so good?”

Sam bit his lip, blinking back the tears in his own eyes.

“Do not go tomorrow.” It came out in a whisper as she dipped her head down, bracing her forehead against his shoulder. “Stay with me, brother.”

Castiel wrapped his arms around her and she sank into his chest, Enochian slipping between her sobs. Over the top of her head Castiel looked at Sam, reddened eyes pleading for him to say something. Anything.

Like,  _ we’ll be fine.  _

_ We know what we’re doing. _

_ No one will get hurt.  _

_ We’ll survive. _

The words parched Sam’s throat, and he couldn’t so much as breathe one of those lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ["Angel by the Wings"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az-EPAHKM3o) by Sia.
> 
> Next chapter is the big showdown! 
> 
> Follow me for updates and random spn rambles on [tumblr](https://angelfishofthelord.tumblr.com/)


	10. you're like the calmest slit to my neck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amara shuffled back and forth in the small circle, avoiding the expectant expressions of the faces of those around her. After a moment weighted by silence she unfolded her arms slowly and she raised her eyes heavenward. “Okay,” she breathed. “Remember, no matter what happens to anyone--”
> 
> “--don’t stop the spell.” Sam nodded, his throat bobbing as he looked at Dean and then to Jack and Castiel. “We won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone's having a good weekend! We're making it to the end of 2020 guys, we've survived.

The sheets on the beds in each bedroom lay still in their smooth spread or rumpled strokes. Lights in the kitchen remained off, bulbs nestled in sockets for a long sleep. Rows of books in the library pressed their spines together, listening to the footsteps of silence crossing the threshold of the room. On the floor of the dungeon the faded lines of the devil’s trap shut its black eyes; the line of cars in the garage huddled closer to each other.

Below the winding staircase that led to the world outside the room had been completely cleared of furniture. Even the round map table was now leaning up against the wall. The initial crack in the table glass from a week ago, when Castiel first heard the angels dying, had been overrun by a hundred more smaller cracks and gashes from the piles of slate rocks that had been heaped there. Dean had talked about replacing the glass the night before, _“after we--”_ ; it had been a throwaway comment, but everyone looked at him as if questioning his audacity to speak of an _after._

Decorating the empty space of the main room were three concentric circles of small, hand-sized slate pieces. The largest circle stretched from the first step of the staircase all the way to the computer consoles in the back. Castiel stood inside the edge of the outer circle, leaning over Jack’s shoulder as the boy studied the paper crammed with Enochian writing.

“.…and so me and Sam just hold our horses until Chuck shows up?” Dean asked, sitting on the step across from him.

“If we completely power the Circle nothing gets in or out.” Sam sat on a step below him, elbows propped up on his knees. “So Cas and Jack start the spell enough to get Chuck’s attention and then as soon as he shows we join in. Amara, shouldn’t we power down the bunker’s warding?”

“And wave the white flag that early?” Amara paused her pacing up and down the curve of the second circle to look at Sam. “What Billie put up isn’t actually strong enough to keep Chuck completely out. Any more than barbed wire keeps a thief from entering. If my brother wanted to be anywhere, he could be. I imagine he was too busy killing the angels and Death to drop by earlier. But also, you know he likes to watch how things play out.”

Jack looked up from the line of Enochian he was furrowed over. “Are you sure this will work? Maybe he’s already recovered by now and he won’t come.”

“That is a possibility.” Castiel glanced over surreptitiously at Amara before continuing. “If that’s the case then we’ll figure something else out.” He tried to ignore the weight of Dean’s gaze pressing on him from behind, but when he turned back to the paper in Jack’s hand he caught Dean’s eye and was surprised by what he saw there. The exasperation of the day before was gone; instead there was a flicker of acceptance as he nodded mutely at Castiel. It was a tiny, almost invisible gesture, but it said _I trust you_ and _I trust the decision you might choose to make._

“How will we know if it's working?” Sam went on, getting to his feet. “I mean, this is God we’re talking about. Will the Circle be strong enough to contain what’s probably going to be--”

“--a massive blowout?” Dean turned to Amara. “Are you going to just suck up all his atoms and that’ll be it?”

“You’re right. The power that will be released when he is fully unmade will be--” Amara shook her head. “Before the process is fully complete I’ll have to take him out of the Circle. Somewhere where the fallout won’t harm anyone.”

“Magnify? Is that what this says?” Jack nudged Castiel’s shoulder, sliding a finger under one of the Enochian words.

“Manifest,” said a woman’s voice.

Castiel looked up to see Serafiel standing beside Jack. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of her long grey cloak and her curly hair was pinned back, revealing the tightening lines around her eyes. She stepped closer, meeting the unexpected stare of everyone in the room with composed resoluteness.

“Look who decided to show up! Welcome to team free will!” Dean hopped up and swung out a hand for her to shake that she took after a moment of deliberation. “Are you here to be a cheerleader or take an actual position in the field?”

A crinkle appeared in her nose and she bent her head towards Castiel. “He is aware that we are not engaged in sport, correct?”

“Yes, Sara--it’s safer in your room--the warding will protect you from--”

“I’m here. To help.” The words came out thickly, as if unused to being spoken. Her eyes skittered nervously around the room, taking in the layout of the sigils and warding on the roof beams above them.

Castiel put on what he hoped looked like an encouraging smile and handed the paper with the Enochian spell to her. The pride he felt at Serafiel making her first choice to fight for humanity was drowned out by the knowledge that having her there meant another life that might hover beyond the extent of his reach, someone else he might fail to protect and save.

“We really appreciate this, Sara,” Sam said, standing up to meet her. “You’re doing a very brave thing.”

“Hey, come on, Sammy, we aren’t that bad a bunch to die with,” Dean grinned.

Castiel didn’t miss how Serafiel blinked at those words. Choosing to even step outside her room must have taken the victory of thousand battles, of having to defeat her trepidation one thought at a time. He moved closer to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder when she suddenly dropped her voice and started mumbling frantically, her fingernail stabbing at one line in particular on the spell paper.

Dean shuffled up beside Jack and poked an elbow at his arm. “Psst, kiddo, share with the class.” He nodded to where the two angels were having a hushed but heated discussion in Enochian.

Jack tilted his head to the side, the start of a frown turning down his lips. “They’re talking about the spell. One of the words, manifest, means that they’ll have to manifest their--oh!--our wings. Sara doesn’t want you to see her wings,” he informed them promptly.

“Hey, we’ve seen Cas’ wings before! At least the shadow of them. They’re hella badass.” Dean flapped his arms up and down, prompting an eye roll from Sam. “I bet yours are just as awesome.”

Castiel squinted at Dean. “Our wings don’t look the same since the fall. They’re…” he exchanged a glance with Serafiel “…damaged. But it will be alright. The spell only requires them to be manifested for a moment to fully activate our power. We’re ready to begin,” he added, nodding at Amara.

Serafiel’s eyes darkened but she said nothing and pushed the paper back into his hands. Her hands fell back into her pockets, the woolen fabric crumpling from the fist she was twisting her fingers too. With her head facing forwards and shoulders pressed back she stood like a soldier about to receive commanding orders, yet her chin still quivered slightly.

Castiel moved closer to her as the rest of the boys took their places. “You don’t have to be here,” he murmured.

A stillness suddenly blanketed her and she turned to face him with a shadow of a smile. “I know.”

Jack reached for Castiel’s hand and Serafiel slipped her fingers into his other one. Sam and Dean were positioned across from them, waiting until Amara walked into the inner circle before linking hands together. 

Amara shuffled back and forth in the small circle, avoiding the expectant expressions of the faces of those around her. After a moment weighted by silence she unfolded her arms slowly and she raised her eyes heavenward. “Okay,” she breathed. “Remember, no matter what happens to anyone--”

“--don’t stop the spell.” Sam nodded, his throat bobbing as he looked at Dean and then to Jack and Castiel. “We won’t.”

A graceful euphony of voices rose as the three angels began chanting in Enochian. Blue sparks like live wire twined through the veins of Castiel’s body as the words escalated. Above him the crackling whine of lightbulbs echoed in harmony. Light swelled behind his retinas and his skin warmed with a glow that spread to his shoulder blades. He couldn’t see Sam and Dean’s expressions clearly in the burgeoning brightness but he knew the shadow of his wings must be visible from the little gasp that floated from across the room.

Jack’s wings appeared in his peripherals a second later. Full, spreading silhouettes that fluttered gently.

Serafiel pitched her body forward, as if hoping to shrink down without fully curling into herself. The bare hook of her right wing hovered beside Castiel, the outline dragging lopsidedly with the uneven sparseness of the broken feathers. Her breath faltered, tripping over the Enochian phrases as she tried to glance over her shoulders and pull her wings in tighter to hide them.

Movement caught Castiel’s attention and he saw Dean moving closer to Serafiel before reaching out to grab her hand. 

“Still awesome,” Dean whispered loudly.

She straightened a little, the words of the spell falling into place as her voice steadied.

The radiance pulsing through Castiel dimmed and the shadows were eclipsed for white spears of light that erupted from the sigiled rocks around them. The beams shot skyward, piercing through the roof and showering everyone below in a fine spray of dust and concrete shards. Castiel felt the tug on his left hand as Jack ducked to avoid a larger piece of debris, and he tried to see through the blinding white to make sure the boy was unharmed as he uttered the last Enochian word.

_Gahoachma._ I am that I am. 

The title of God, the very power Heaven was founded on.

Each individual thread of light from the sigils began to weave together in a single fabric of white, translucent and solid all at once. It surrounded them from behind and in front, offering them mere mirror glimpses of what was happening in the innermost circle.

There was no question of who was in there, though. 

Chuck’s twisted smile sliced like a sword through the veil.

“Amara,” he chuckled, rubbing his hands together. “Look who’s entered the final act. The last chapter, the heroes coming together to face the villain. What a classic.”

Chuck’s gaze shifted from side to side, as if searching between the eaves of light. If Jack hadn’t been holding his hand Castiel would have immediately clutched at his neck. The veins beneath his skin tingled, as if the remnants of divinity in the bruising were reacting to the presence nearby. Beside him Serafiel dug her nails into the back of his hand, forming deep crescents that swelled with blood.

“Gang’s all here. Oof, now there’s a little footnote I forgot about.” Chuck waved at Serafiel like a friend greeting her from across the street. “So, sis, where’s the big ‘I know you still have good in you’ talk?”

Amara stared at him. “Why are you unmaking angels?”

“Can’t you tell? I’m in the rewrite stage here.” He held out his arms, inviting her to look at the five surrounding them. “I’m big enough to admit when something needs a complete redo, but I’m not stupid enough to not salvage the good bits. This right here, these guys--” he gestured at Sam and Dean who were feverishly chanting their lines of the spell “--they’re the damn good bits. So’s the self-hating angel of Thursday over there.” 

Light flared, hissing like water splashed over flame. Amara moved closer to her brother. “And why were you in Heaven?”

Chuck shrugged. “Unmaking isn’t the same as creating. Practice makes perfect. Don’t worry, I’m better at it now.” He lifted his right arm and the sleeve slipped back to reveal a stumpy lump in place of the appendage Jack had severed. It had regrown in the shape of a half formed palm. “I’m learning, you know. I won’t be so easily interrupted again.” 

“You used to love your creations, brother.” Amara folded her hands, almost imploringly. “What happened to you?”

“And what would you know about love, sister?" he snapped suddenly, eyes darkening. "You’ve never made anything and then watched it fail you over and over and over again. You never created anything at all. You only ever wanted to destroy the world, why do you suddenly care about preserving it now? Did the Winchesters get to you? Did they give you their little spiel about hope and redemption? I taught them all their best lines, you know, starting with the whole mom-on-the-ceiling opening act.” He threw a glance over his shoulder at the two brothers. “Tragedy builds character, doesn’t it?”

“I loved you, brother,” Amara whispered, as if oblivious to his sneering rant. “But I don’t know who you are anymore.” She lifted her tear-filled eyes to meet his cold ones. Her hand rose slowly, reaching out in increments. “I am sorry it had to come to this.”

Chuck stumbled back and seized her wrist before her fingers could even approach his neck. “You?” he gasped, shock and fury knitting his brow. “You would dare to--you would unmake _me_?” His eyes whipped around, a streak of black suddenly aimed at Castiel. “Did you put her up to this? A little revenge for wiping out the last pitiful remains of your kind?”

“Brother, no--” Amara’s cry was swallowed by the deafeaning pulse that roared as Chuck slammed his foot against the light barrier, sending Castiel and Serafiel flying across the room.

A concrete chest of the wall collapsed on Castiel, billows of dust clouding his spinning vision. When he managed to crawl out from under the rumble that he saw Jack, Sam, and Dean were still rooted in place in the second circle. Their lips were still moving in sync to the spell but their eyes were riveted forward, each a reflection of unabashed terror.

There, a blight in the center of the third circle, stood Chuck. His left hand was wrapped around Amara’s neck.

Her eyes were screaming, black ribbons bleeding from the cracks spawning in her skin.

Castiel twisted his head around, searching for any sign of Serafiel. He made an aborted attempt to stand only to drop back to the ground. His legs felt broken and his grace was reaching weakly to repair the damaged bones. From his sleeve he dropped down his angel blade and stabbed it into the tiled floor, dragging himself half a foot forward. 

But being outside the Circle and the force of the sigils felt like a buffer pushing against him. It took every ounce of concentration just to keep a hold on the blade and crawl forward. He squinted against the gale and yanked his blade up again, driving it down a few inches ahead. He could see Amara struggling to pry Chuck off. A bubbling tear split her cheek in two, blood and smoke pouring from the open craven. If Jack could throw another surge of power, the way he did when he saved him, Castiel figured it could release her. But the boy was running on reserves by now just to maintain the spell for the sigils. If he stopped even for a second Chuck could break loose and-- 

_Sam. Dean. Jack._

Castiel tasted soot on his tongue and drew the blade closer to his side.

They were going to die. First them, then the world.

He dug his elbow harder into the solid ground and propelled the weight of his body closer to them. At least he could be near his family before they were eviscerated, unmade at a speed he would be forced to listen to for eternity. Chuck would unmake him last, Castiel was sure of that. 

Between the eaves of light Castiel searched for the faces of the ones he loved, to see them one last time. Jack’s legs were wobbling as the spell drained him and Sam was reaching over to try and put his arm around his shoulder to support him. Dean was swiveling his head around wildly, deaf to the call of Castiel’s voice. He was searching for him, Castiel realized, and when Dean’s gaze landed on him Castiel knew that he still couldn’t see him.

He would have never looked at him with such naked fear.

Suddenly the blade felt so very light in Castiel’s hand. He didn’t want his family to die trembling and terrified. He wasn’t strong enough to save them, but maybe he could buy them a few seconds of hope.

The silver tip rested a few inches away from his throat.

It felt like he was pulling it from another dimension when he finally pushed it through.

Once the skin broke he dug harder, driving the blade in a deep grin around his neck. He cupped his other hand underneath the gushing wound, letting the grace pool in his trembling palm. It rested there for a second, light and soft like a fistful of summer rain before he hurled it forward.

The grace hit the forcefield in a splash of white, knocking Chuck and Amara back against the sigil light. Chuck staggered up on his knees, swiping at the air in front of him, as if momentarily blinded. In a second Chuck’s body was suddenly flung high up in the air, suspended by the neck.

Amara stood there, blood still oozing from her cheek but her jaw tightened tenaciously. Both of her hands clutched at Chuck’s neck, black arms of smoke restraining his kicking legs. Chuck flopped his arms weakly, eyes rolling back as he flailed to grasp some mercy from a sister who had none left to give.

Castiel felt his arms go numb first. The blade clattered noisily from his hand and his attempt to rise only ended up with him rolling over flat on his back. 

Somewhere in the distance above him Chuck cried out as his eyes burst in comets and soared down his cheeks.

Warmth washed over Castiel’s fingers as he pressed a hand to his bleeding neck. The blood curled around his fingers, fitting soft like a glove in winter. His eyes rolled back and forth, trying to hold to the last diminishing visages of the world and the people in it. 

He dimly registered Jack’s shoes in the right corner. He had bought those shoes for him on the way home from a hunt once because Jack had broken the heel of his shoe on the way out of a wendigo cave. Jack insisted on choosing the blue and red one because it reminded him of the colors of Superman’s costume.

Sam’s pant leg was sticking out somewhere by the right; he’d been wearing the same clothes for the last two days, too frazzled to do any laundry. Castiel had offered to put a load on earlier that morning and Sam had laughed, saying that if they survived they would have all they needed time to do laundry later.

Dean--that was the glint of his watch Castiel thought he saw in the fading light. Dean made a point of announcing to him that the watch was waterproof when he got it, and looked mildly miffed when Castiel pointed out that their hunts rarely took them near water.

Serafiel. He couldn’t see her but he remembered that he had promised to watch her favorite show with her. It wasn’t so much her favorite as it was the only piece of media she had consumed since arriving, but she had already re-watched it enough times to quote lines in conversations with Jack. 

_I’m sorry,_ he tried to say. To her. To all of them. 

It hurt, Castiel noticed faintly. His chest burned as he choked on the blood gurgling through his mouth. He could hear himself gasping, clawing for air that never reached his lungs.

A tear formed in his eye, catching onto his eyelashes before it dribbled down.

It hurt.

He had forgotten how much it hurt to die.

He should have known.

He should have--

The hurt.

It stopped.

Dimmed, like someone throwing a sheet over a candle.

Serafiel’s eyes loomed over him like ivory stars.

Her finger lifted off his neck, threads of grace dripping off the end. 

Then she collapsed beside him.

Pushing himself up on one arm Castiel opened his mouth to speak and heard nothing come out.

Serafiel lay there, staring at him, her hands clasped to her side. Blue light leaked out from an open wound there and Castiel immediately clamped his hand over it, lips still asking silent questions. He touched his other hand to his throat, feeling through the blood still layered there. The slit was healed over, but inside was still a mess of severed ends and cut wires.

He pulled Serafiel up and propped her against his chest, angling her away from the blast of the Circle. She darted a look behind them, her lips moving slightly and he bent down to hear her.

“Our Father.”

Amara’s heels could be seen in the corner of his eyes and he figured that she still had a hold on him. He couldn’t turn his head fully without his vision blurring. The blood loss, he dimly registered. He didn’t know how long he had been bleeding out but he barely had the strength to support Serafiel’s slumping form in both arms. Her head lolled limply on his shoulder, her cold lips pressing a whisper of Enochian into his ear.

“ _Gnay ge zacam esiasch_.” Her fingers tangled loosely around his arm. _“Paaox. Gnay ge zacam. Paaox. Paaox...”_

Do not go, brother. Stay. Do not go. Stay. 

Her words rose in feverish rhythm, a lullaby humming beneath the roar of a dying God.

_Paid._ He signed the word with trembling fingers. _Always._

She reached up and caught his hand, bringing it to rest against her heart. Her eyes met his, planets serene in the galaxy crumbling behind them.

Ripples of light were growing from the Circle, a rising force that burnt the hair on the back of his neck. Castiel’s eardrums teemed with the static in the air and his muscles twitched, instinctively throwing himself over Serafiel as a sonic blast detonated behind him and drowned the room in white. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ["Mr. Rattlebone"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvrDAMx8ri0) by Matt Maeson
> 
> Enochian taken from this [dictionary](http://members.chello.nl/~wep.vandervalk/Enochian%20dictionary.htm)


	11. how rare and beautiful it is to even exist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Heaven isn’t supposed to be this loud."
> 
> The thought burned through Dean’s mind as he opened his eyes to a cacophony spinning all around him. 
> 
> He took a minute to consider that he might have ended up in Hell after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter guys! Settle in :)
> 
> Some lines quoted from 14x08 and 15x14.

_ Heaven isn’t supposed to be this loud. _

The thought burned through Dean’s mind as he opened his eyes to a cacophony spinning all around him. 

He took a minute to consider that he might have ended up in Hell after all.

Then he caught sight of something that looked like one of the sigil slate rocks, sticking out of his leg. Flecks of blood splashed as he yanked it out and tossed it aside. His fingers felt around the wound, relieved to note that it was just a flesh cut.

So he wasn’t dead. But he was also lying in a room that hardly looked like a room anymore. Pieces of wall and staircase surrounded him in a forest of sharp angles. Fine white smoke laced through the endlessly falling dust in the air. Above him a canopy of black looked remarkably like the night sky.

The roof was missing, he realized belatedly. Or at least most of the roof had been torn clean through.

“Sam! Jack! Cas!” He spit the soot from his lips and cleared his throat. “Sara!”

His chest ached as the name raced to the tip of his tongue. “Amara?” If she was still here, then Chuck was, too. He wouldn’t be able to reach anyone if his life was one snap away from ending.

The corner of Sam’s shoe in the distance winked at him like a lighthouse beacon and Dean stumbled to his feet, spurred on to rush blindly through the maze of debris. He paused only briefly to snag a piece of cloth sticking out of the twisted staircase railing and tie it around the wound in his leg. By the time he reached Sam the strip of cloth was already soaked through, dark red against the startling white around him.

“Sam!” he rasped again. His brother sat there on the ground with his back to him, a hand on Castiel’s shoulder.  The body of a woman was slumped in Castiel’s arms, faded gray ribbons of her coat fluttering around her prone figure. 

Serafiel.

The angel who took her first stand for humanity, and death was how she was rewarded.

Not so different from what happened to Castiel after his own first choice to rebel against Heaven.

He slid down beside them, resting a hand gently on the edge of her feet. “Sara,” he croaked. “I’m so sorry, Cas.”

“Dean!” Sam wrapped him in an embrace before he could get a good look at Castiel and then he was pulled back and facing a very confused little brother. “Sara isn’t dead. Cas was just telling me that her wound closed the minute Amara took off with Chuck. And look.” Sam reached behind Dean and wiped at Castiel’s neck, coming away with fingertips coated in blood. “The bruising. It’s gone too. Amara must be unmaking Chuck.”

Dean blinked, staring at the blood and trying to match it with the tone of excited relief in his brother’s voice. He turned around to see Castiel watching him with wide blue eyes, a color that seemed all the more bright in contrast to the smears of blood swathed around his neck.

Castiel’s face muscles twitched and he raised his index finger, first motioning at Dean and then pointing both of his index fingers at each other and twisting them back and forth.

“What?” Dean frowned.  


“He’s asking if you’re hurt,” Sam translated. “He can’t speak, something happened to his voice. I don’t understand what, but he was signing something about Sara not being able to heal all of it.”

A hand touched his knee and Dean switched his gaze back to Castiel who repeated the motion and then added a third where he pointed at Dean’s leg.

“What.” The explosion seemed to have robbed Dean of his vocabulary. All the alphabets were free falling through his mind and crashing into each other.

Serafiel, not dead.

Sam, not dead.

Castiel, not dead but not talking and covered in blood.

Castiel moved his fingers again, his eyes still zeroing in on that pesky cut. A flicker of guilt flashed over the angel’s face and he pointed at himself before making a fist and moving it in circles around his chest.

“He says he’s sorry he can’t heal you,” Sam vocalized beside him.

Suddenly the black lines in Dean’s head took the form of coherent sentences.

“What happened to you, Cas?” he heard himself say at the same time Sam asked “Where’s Jack?”

_ Jack _ . The font in Dean’s head switched to all caps. “Jack!” He pushed himself up, peering desperately through the clearing mist around them, and then sagged back down with relief. “I see ‘im. He’s coming.”

A wavering shadow came shifting towards them from across the room, t he young voice preceding his arrival. “Cas? Cas, where are you? I can’t feel him.” Something like a sob broke through the wheezing coughs. “Cas, Cas, I can’t feel anything.”

“Over here!” Sam disappeared and the spot beside Dean felt like a vacant hole. 

Sam reappeared in a moment, brushing against Dean’s shoulders and calming the shivers building in his muscles. Shock or adrenaline, one of them was rattling against his teeth and Dean clenched his jaw as the kid joined their small circle on the floor.

“Cas.” The boy put a hand against the angel’s chest, gingerly splaying his fingers there for a moment before lowering his head. “I can’t feel it,” he repeated. “It’s gone, Cas. It’s gone.”

Castiel’s eyes softened and he put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. He pointed a thumb at himself and opened his hand halfway.

“He says he’s fine.” Sam hesitated, squinting at the rapid movements of Castiel’s fingers. “He wants to know if you can…heal Sara. She’s still hurt…inside? Internally. Also Cas’ throat is damaged, somehow, ” he continued, turning to Jack. “Can you heal that, too?” 

Somehow Dean knew the last sentence was something Sam requested and not Castiel’s own demand.

Jack immediately pushed two fingers to his neck and a tremor of gold lit up the skin, spreading a shimmering gold against the red. After a second Jack lifted his fingers but his eyes were still fixed on Castiel’s neck, as if studying it. “It’s gone,” Jack murmured, brushing the bloodstains away with a swipe of his fingers. “It’s gone, Cas. Who took it from you?”

“Help Sara.” The first words Castiel spoke were a thin, wretched rasp. He closed a hand around Jack’s fingers. “Please.”

_ What’s gone? _ Dean tried to ask, but he couldn't get the words out, not even when Sam and Jack worked together to lift Serafiel up in their arms; not even when they started heading away from the demolished room and probably down to the infirmary; not even when Castiel scooted closer and tapped his knee, piercing through his daze with a look of embarrassment.

“My legs.” Castiel lowered his eyes. “They’re broken…I forgot.” The last part of the sentence was barely audible.

“What’s gone?” Dean blurted out, too loud, too late.

Castiel shifted his eyes over to the space behind Dean and gestured weakly. “My blade. Can you reach it?”

The blade couldn't be what Jack was talking about but Dean reached for it anyway. The silver weapon laid a few inches away, and when Dean picked it up he noticed the tip was saturated in blood. 

Freshly drawn blood. 

His mouth opened to pursue the question Castiel had obviously tried to evade when he saw that Castiel was clawing at the wall, trying unsuccessfully to pull himself up and he rushed over. “Hold on, let me help you. Don’t be a stubborn ass,” he grunted, slinging one of his arms over his shoulder and wrapping an arm around his waist to support him. “I got you, Cas. I got you.”

By the time the two limped into the infirmary Dean saw that Sam had already set up Serafiel on one of the cots. Jack was perched at her bedside, a position he immediately abandoned when he noticed Castiel entering the room. One press of the boy’s fingers to Castiel’s head and the angel straightened up, taking a step away from Dean.

Dean felt the absence again, like someone had ripped a page from his spine. 

Something was missing.

He was supposed to know something. Or ask something.

His eyes fell to the bloodied blade still in his hand, the patches of clean silver reflecting his own grime-covered face back at him. Beyond him the others were bustling around Serafiel’s bedside but Dean remained still, turning the blade back and forth under the infirmary’s neon lights as he tried to remember what had happened.  They had been standing there, in the Circle. Repeating the spell. Chuck attacked the sigil walls. Castiel, Serafiel. They were gone. Amara tried to unmake Chuck but he grabbed her first. It had been over. They were going to die.

“Did you do that?” The sound of Dean’s voice made the other three look up, but Dean only pointed the end of the sword at Jack. “Did you do that power-up thing to get Chuck off Amara?”

“Dean.” Castiel tugged the blade out of his hand and pushed it up his own sleeve, only to have it fall back out. “I forgot.” His voice sounded small and far away and he looked away, his hands hanging empty at his side instead of picking up the blade. 

“I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t. I tried.” Jack sat down on the other empty bed and curled his arm around his stomach.

“You held on for the sigil, that’s was enough.” Castiel said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“No.” Dean shook his head, trying to hush the volume of the questions screeching through his mind. “No, no, no, that wasn’t enough. We were up the creek in crapville with Amara coming apart at the seams and then suddenly Chuck wasn’t--and she turned the game around--” his eyes flicked up and down: from the blade on the floor that Castiel was bending down to retrieve to Serafiel’s closed eyes, barely visible above the mountain of covers, to Jack, pale and hunched over to Castiel, blood on his neck, blood on the blade, blood on the--“ _ You.  _ What did you do?”

Castiel placed the blade down carefully on the bedside table and then pulled away from it like it scalded him. “What I had to.”

Jack glanced up at Dean with wide red-rimmed eyes. “I can’t feel it anymore. It’s gone,” he said, as if it would make sense the twelfth time he said it.

And then it did. 

Jack, after Chuck had tried to unmake Castiel, told them that he knew Castiel was alright because he could feel his grace. Jack, sensing that Serafiel was an angel the moment she entered the Bunker. Jack, stumbling through the aftermath of destruction saying he couldn’t feel--

“Your grace.” Dean said, disbelieving his own voice. Across the room came the clatter of a bottle as Sam stood there, mouth and hands open, a strangled whisper of “your grace?” echoing after the bottle stopped spinning on the floor.

Dean’s eyes shifted immediately to Serafiel and Castiel stepped forward, drawing himself up defensively as if interpreting Dean’s questioning look to be one of accusation. 

“It wasn’t her idea, she wasn’t even there. I-I couldn’t find her. After Chuck blasted us, I didn’t know--” Castiel stopped. “I didn’t know if she survived. But I saw what was happening. I had nothing else to fight with.” He was looking at his hands now. “I-she found me. Later. She saved me with the little strength she had. She was wounded and I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t heal her. And then everything just…stopped.”

Dean blinked. “You cut out your grace and threw it at God?”

In lieu of answering him Castiel just stared at him and Dean wished to a deity that wasn’t God that he would look away for once. Castiel had never been one for hiding what he felt; his emotions were always there, raw and molted for everyone to see, and Dean couldn’t handle that look of resignation and guilt and grief and somehow still fierce determination all churning in those damn blue eyes.

Before Dean could ask any other questions a shaking roar of thunder resounded from above them. Castiel let out a frantic sound of “Amara” before dashing out and down the hall. Dean let his legs carry him to follow, even as if his mind still warped itself around the fact that his best friend had carved his life out into a grenade that he hurled at the maker of the universe.

Later, Castiel had said. Serafiel found him later.  How later? 

_Seconds-before-he-bled-to-death_ later?

The sound of a door clanging alerted him to the fact that Castiel had gone outside. His leg wobbled a little as he stumbled over the half broken stairs. He latched onto the door handle as soon as it was within reach and flung the door open only to stop short.  Outside, the night rolled like a mist around Castiel’s shoulders, revealing him in fragments. He stood right in front of the bunker, his face upturned to the inky black, eyes lost in the shudder of lights ripping through the fabric of the sky. 

It wasn’t simply a starry night; it was a tapestry alive and rippling, the air itself heaving with the surge of power.

“Is that--is that Amara unmaking Chuck?” Dean panted.

Castiel nodded.

“She’s really doing it.” For the first time in days, weeks, no,  _ months _ , Dean felt real. The very fact of his existence pulsed like wildfire through his veins, infusing him from head to toe. He closed his eyes, feeling the brightness above shifting over his closed eyelids, and let his lungs fill with unchained air. 

Beside him nothing stirred at all, not even Castiel.

After a minute he cracked open one eye to see his friend still standing there, still as a statue moss could grow over. His shoulders were hunched, as if shielding him from the night air, and his head was lowered a little but eyes still trained above like a telescope. Every few seconds his body heaved with a little tremble.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked.

Castiel dropped his gaze down, flexing his fingers and then touching the tips of his fingers to his palm. He turned slowly to face Dean. “I…I...” he pushed his hands into his pockets. “I’m cold.”

The quiet panic in his eyes echoed the two now familiar words. _ I forgot. _

“Oh.” Dean frowned for a second while his mind played catch up. “Oh! We should go back inside then, let’s go back inside.”

Stepping back inside the bunker was a shock treatment to Dean’s frayed nervous system. Being face to face with the wreckage of the main room below finally aligned all his scattered thoughts. He could see the faint shape of the sigils still in lopsided circles; the charred spot in the center where Amara had fought her brother; the wall to the left that was now flattened to a spreading crumble; and the spot a few feet away from where he and Sam had stood. 

A spot graced with a splash of blood. 

Castiel stood beside him, hands in his pockets, still shivering slightly.

“Did you really--” Dean started.

_ Rip out your grace and bleed to death. _

__

Castiel blinked and looked up.

“Are you now--” Dean closed his eyes to stop seeing that red.

_ Bleed to death. _

Dean opened his mouth but nothing came out.

_ To death. _

If Serafiel hadn’t healed him, Castiel would be dead by now. That bloodied spot would be the place where he died, lying in the wreckage of victory. They would have to wrap and burn his body. Again.  He would have died alone, beneath the chorus of a raging battle. He had been dying, in fact, and they didn’t know. 

Dean had been standing a few feet away from his best friend’s last breaths and he didn’t even know.

A faint prickling tugged behind his eyelids and he stepped away, pressing a fist to his lips. The only person who knew he was going to die was Castiel. The moment he put the blade to his throat he knew he wouldn’t live to see the world he sacrificed to save. He chose to turn his own life force into a weapon to give the people he loved a chance at a new start.

“Dean. Are you alright?” A hand on his shoulder. Castiel, his raspy voice still radiating concern.

“Cas…” Dean barely got the word out before his voice cracked. He turned around, grabbing his friend and pulling him against his chest. He wrapped both arms around Castiel, holding him so tightly he knew it must be hurting him. “Thank you,” he mumbled through the tears burning down his cheeks. “Thank you.”

It wasn’t enough, it would never be enough, but the two words kept coming out anyways.

“Thank you.”

* * *

Jack pushed his thumb into the center of Castiel’s palm, sending another weak flare of grace through him only to have Castiel gently push his finger away.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, smiling through the exhaustion in his eyes. “Save your strength, Jack, those sigils must have drained you. Besides, I’m warm enough now.”

Sitting in the library chair beside him, Castiel looked almost buried in the wool blanket Dean had bundled him up in. Sam had managed to find out what Jimmy Novak’s blood type was and they’d given him a blood transfusion after he almost fainted on the back to the infirmary. Serafiel hadn’t woken up yet but Jack had reassured Castiel that she was stable and her grace was repairing the rest of the internal damage Jack didn’t have the energy to heal.

Sam leaned over the table and put a steaming mug in front of Castiel. “Drink up,” he said, patting his shoulder. “It’ll help. You need more fluids in your body. Once you’ve rested a little you should try and eat something.”

Castiel picked up the mug gingerly and took a small sip. “It’s sweet,” he conceded, before shifting his eyes back to Sam, who was still standing there watching him.

“Don’t.” Castiel put the mug down and shook his head, as if knowing what was on Sam’s mind. “Don’t apologize for my choice.” He rested a hand on his arm. “Thank you for the tea.”

Sam smiled through glistening eyes. “Don’t mention it,” he managed.  


“Still no sign of Amara.” Dean came back into the library, wiping his hands on a rag. “There’s no sign of Chuck either but I told the rest of the hunters to stay alert.” He flicked a glance over at Castiel but before he could say anything Castiel spoke up.

“I’m fine.”

Jack pushed his chair closer, looping his arm around Castiel’s and leaning his head on his shoulder. He couldn’t feel the rhythm of his grace anymore, or hear the song and know that his father was alright. But listening to the steady beat of his heart brought him another kind of comfort. When he closed his eyes he could almost see the rush of veins pumping, reminding him that Castiel was still there and alive.

“Can you reach her?” It took the question being repeated a second time for Jack to realize that Dean was talking to him.

“I tried,” Jack said, straightening up reluctantly. “I’ve been trying, but--”

“I had my hands full at the time.” Standing between the two bookshelves stood Amara, flush in the scent of smoke and stardust. Her pantsuit was singed around the edges and her hair blown back in a wild tangle. Her right arm was extended and in her hand glowed a sphere of shifting molecules of light that Jack had to squint to recognize.

“Is that…” Jack's breath caught in his throat. “Is that what’s left of him?”

Dean pointed at the shiny orb. “That’s Chuck?” 

“Yes and no. It’s the remaining traces of his being, his power.” She stepped forward and tipped her hand down, letting the particles slide down and hover over the lamp on the table like a halo. “My brother as you know him has been unmade.”

Sam rubbed his forehead wearily. “So it’s over?” he whispered and Jack felt the spreading ripple of those words. He looked up at his great-aunt, searching her eyes imploringly until she nodded.

“Yes.”

“It’s over,” Dean echoed, throwing an arm around his brother.

Jack relaxed against Castiel’s shoulder, pushing his finger back into his palm and listening to the heartbeat pulse responding to his flickers of grace. The woolen blanket scratched at his cheek, but he didn’t care. He felt Castiel fold his fingers around his hand and squeeze it gently.

“Can you--can you give it back?” Sam was asking for something. Asking Amara for something. “Can you give it back to him?” It took Jack a minute to realize what it was and when it dawned on him he shot up immediately.

“Can you?” he echoed desperately.

Amara moved around the table until she stood behind Castiel and placed a hand on his shoulder. “That depends. Do you want to be an angel, or do you want to be happy?”

Castiel’s fingers suddenly felt cold and sweaty against Jack’s hand.

Jack stared at Amara. “She knows?” Beside him Sam and Dean were glancing at each other with equally grim looks. “You know?”

Sam nodded. “We asked her for help,” he said, under the sound of Dean snapping, “What do you mean, Amara? What does his deal have to do with it?”

“Because before I came here I stopped by the Empty for a chat. Did you know, Castiel, that when it finally takes you, it still won’t be able to go back to sleep? The deal would take you in alive. So you would be awake, as would it be, simply there to torment you for all eternity.”

“I don’t care.” Suddenly the grip of Castiel’s fingers tightened on Jack’s hand. “I won’t let it take Jack.”

“And we won’t let it take you,” Sam said. “So what did the Empty say, Amara? Can you put it back to sleep? And can you give Cas his grace back?”

She leaned between Castiel and Jack to point at the hovering ball of light. “No. But that can.”  Her fingertip brushed the edge of the glow and it shivered with radiance. “A dying force as strong as my brother would effectively shut down the Empty. Nothing would stir in there for eons. The Empty only ever wanted you, Castiel, out of spite. But there are more important things to it than settling an old score. I offered it something it couldn’t refuse: releasing your deal in exchange for the traces of my brother that would put it back to sleep for good.”

“But?” Dean prompted impatiently.

“If I give the Empty what’s left of my brother I can’t rebuild your grace, Castiel. I would need to absorb this remaining power to do that. Creation was my brother’s speciality and grace is beyond what I can on my own.” She closed her eyes and squeezed his shoulder gently. “The choice is yours.”

“I’m sorry.” The words dropped from Jack’s throat like a drop of rain, soon joined by more falling whispers. “I’m sorry.” Somewhere across the room Sam and Dean’s voices were trying to wrangle some other solution to the knot of the situation, but all he could see was Castiel, standing up to a force that only attacked Heaven because of Jack.

_ Take me. _

“I’m sorry.”

_ Take me in his stead. _

“I’m so sorry.”

_ I will go willingly. _

“This is all my fault. I--”

“Jack. Look at me.”

He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to look at Castiel and know that every fading second of his life was because of him. He was a thief, stealing days of existence away from the people he loved. How many others had suffered and died since he had been born? Starting with his own mother, ending with Sam and Dean’s mother, and Castiel’s aborted eternity spanning all throughout.

“Jack.” Someone pushed his chair around and lifted his chin up. Castiel looked at him and Jack could have sworn for a second he thought his grace had returned, the way his entire being was awash in the aurora of love. “Jack, it wasn’t your fault that you died or that the Empty came after you. It wasn’t your fault that I made my choice. You saved me. You brought me back to life, you stopped Chuck from unmaking me me, you did all that because you care about me. You care about Sam and Dean, and they care about you. I made that deal because I care about you. We save the people we love. Do you understand?”

Jack nodded silently as Castiel brushed a thumb across his cheek, wiping away the tears rolling down.

“Amara.” Castiel looked up at her. “You know what my answer is.”

She nodded slowly.

“Thank you,” Castiel breathed, pulling Jack into his arms.

Amara bent down, smoothing out the rumpled strands of Jack’s hair and tucking a stray curl behind his ear. “You get your wish, child.”

_ I made it myself. Happy birthday Jack. _

__

_ Alright. Make a wish. _

__

Jack had looked at the wispy frosting of the cake with its squiggly letters and lone candle, had seen the smile of the brothers warm and orange in the dancing flame, and closed his eyes.

_ I wish for my family to stay together. _

* * *

Sam rubbed his eyes wearily before stepping into the infirmary. His body was beginning to break down from the events of the past twelve hours but he needed to make sure Castiel didn’t stay up all night watching over Serafiel. Amara had restored the bunker before she left to take the traces of Chuck to the Empty, and Dean had taken to watching something with Jack to help calm him down enough to sleep. Or to distract him from the guilt that was still lingering around the corners of his bloodshot eyes. Either way Sam had nodded in silent agreement when Dean led the boy away.

Sam had made his rounds around the bunker to make sure all the warding was still intact, just in case. He still couldn’t quite believe that it was over, and was half expecting Chuck to pop up with another terrorizing grin and new plan of menacing torment. He also stopped by Castiel’s room to make sure it had plenty of blankets and that the bathroom was stocked with fresh towels and toiletries. They would have to remember now, that their friend would need necessities he didn’t need before; he would need sleep and food and medicine and probably should get an anti-possession tattoo and--

He paused, running a hand through his hair. The first step was to convince Castiel to leave his sister’s side. The rest could wait until tomorrow.

When he stepped into the infirmary he immediately noticed that Serafiel wasn’t in the bed. She was standing next to the bed, elbows pointed out awkwardly as she tugged a sheet over the curled up figure on the mattress. 

Sam moved in further a step and saw that it was Castiel sleeping there. Serafiel pushed his head up a little, shuffling it back and forth until she settled it in the center of the pillows. Her fingers ghosted over the edge of the sheet, as if ensuring it was tucked securely around his shoulders.

She took a step back, surveying her work carefully.

After a moment of hesitation she bent down and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“This is the correct procedure for mortal sleep, is it not?” she asked, straightening up to face him. 

“Um--yeah, sure,” Sam grinned, pulling out a chair from the table beside him. “Do you want to sit next to him for a bit?”

“I am guarding him. Sleep puts a mortal in a vulnerable, defensible position. This is why you humans assume the sole occupation of our species is guardianship, correct? You fear unknown assailants.” Her eyes drifted to the figure beneath the blankets. “I do not wish for my brother to suffer this fear.”

Sam pushed the chair closer and sat down on another one at the foot of the bed. “It’s pretty safe in here, I checked all the wardings. It’s over, remember? We won.”

She eyed the chair for a few seconds, deliberating before sitting down in it cautiously, her gaze still fixed on Castiel. Her hands fit over her knees and Sam noticed that her fingers were clenching at the fabric of her pants leg.

“How are you holding up, Sara?” Sam paused and then rephrased. “Are you feeling alright?”

“I am conflicted,” she admitted. “If I had come across Castiel on Heaven’s battlefield as I found him today, graceless and yet still imbued with a spark of life, I would have smote him instantly. It would have been a mercy.”

Sam tried hard not to think of finding Castiel’s body, eyes burnt out and smoke curling from charred holes in his head. “Life as a human isn’t that bad, is it?” He attempted a smile that felt as unfair as it was weak. “There’ll be challenges for sure, but we’ll be there for him every step of the way. It’s still his life to live.”

“You think this because you were born to this existence. You do not live every waking moment aware of the loss. Living without grace is like living within walls of glass.” She held up a hand against the air in front of her. “The sounds, the colors, the souls, the light, it is all muted. You reach to clear the fog, to wipe the glass clean, because you know inherently this is not how it should be. But the view never clears.” Turning to face him with sorrow weighing her green eyes she continued, “It is a life half diminished, Sam Winchester. It is a suffering we do not even meet out to those fallen as far as Lucifer.”

“You can just call me Sam,” he spoke up. “I didn’t know--I mean, I guessed that would be hard but--why did you save him then?”

She dropped her hand back to her knees, her shoulders slumped wearily. “I do not know.”

“I do.”

Serafiel looked up in confusion.

“You saved him because you’re good, Sara. What you said yesterday about Cas, about everything he’s done and how much love he has--you have this same love, this ability to do good in you.”

“Be careful of assigning goodness to me, Sam,” she said quietly. “You cannot know the atrocities I have committed in the name of a Father or a brother who has given orders. I have taken Heaven’s sword and run it through men, women, and children for the righteousness of a truth that was hollow after all.”

“Sara, you came to help us today with the Circle even though you were scared, and you stayed there in the thick of the fight, never turning back. You spent what little energy you had to save your brother. Cas told us that you were badly hurt but your first thought was to heal him, not yourself.” Sam paused, deliberating the memories that came to mind before going on. “I know what it’s like to have listened to the wrong person and end up hurting people. I know how it feels to remember all the horrible things you’ve done in the past and think that they define you. But you are who you are today, not yesterday or tomorrow. And you made choices to do good  _ today. _ ”

Her eyebrows dipped as she wrinkled her brow thoughtfully before nodding slowly. “I do not regret my choices today. Even if I cannot understand my actions yet, I am certain they were not wrong. That is a certainty I have not felt in a long time.” Looking up she added, “May I stay here with him? I know that the world outside is safe but I wish to remain with Castiel, at least for the first night. I know there are sometimes noncorporeal assailants in the realm of sleep and he may not yet know how to fight them.”

“Of course,” Sam smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You can stay as long as you want. This is your home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "[Saturn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzNvk80XY9s)" by Sleeping At Last.
> 
> ASL referenced in this chapter taken from [here](https://www.handspeak.com/translate/)
> 
> So that's how I solved the Empty deal--I always kinda hoped they would put Chuck in the Empty. What do you think?


	12. and I'll tell you all about it when I see you again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two months had passed since Chuck’s unmaking at the hands of his sister. Amara had disappeared to deliver the remaining traces of him to the Empty and had since returned only once to check in with the team. “There is damage everywhere in the universe from my brother’s actions,” she told them. “I want to try and see what I can fix.” 
> 
> “Will we see you again?” Jack had spoken up quietly from his end of the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for going on this journey with me! The end truly does have no end.
> 
> All the love to my amazing beta reader [alpacamybags](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacamybags/pseuds/alpacamybags) and go give her ongoing S15 fix-it a read!

Tiny lines wove across Jack’s forehead as he bent over the plate in careful concentration. His finger nudged the hamburger bun to the left, and then to the right, bumping it up against the pile of fries. The small puddle of ketchup oozed towards the edge of the plate and he grabbed a stray fry to scoop up the excess, only to see Dean’s finger shoot out and swipe up the drop.

“Hey, don’t mess with mine!” Jack pushed his hand away playfully.

“It’s not about presentation, kid, it’s about the taste.” Dean grinned and pointed at his own plate that was almost overflowing with crunchy fries. “It’s about me winning. You can go ahead and make a whole damn matchstick house of fries but I’ve still got this one in the bag.”

“No bullying the other contestants, Dean.” Sam poked his mop of unruly hair around the corner of the kitchen. “Just bring them out so he can start judging.”

Jack slipped an eager smirk at Dean as he lifted up his plate and followed him out to the dining room table where Castiel sat, elbows resting on the table and chin propped up in his hands. He sniffed at the scent of fried oil and meat, affecting an expression of particularity as the boys put their plates down in front of him.

Sam moved to stand beside him, hands clasped behind his back like a solemn judge at a competition. He lowered his voice to discuss with Castiel while lifting an eyebrow at Dean and Jack every now and then.

Dean nudged Jack with his elbow when Castiel took a large bite of his burger. Jack poked him back with the toe of his shoe when the angel took a second bite from his burger.

“So?” Dean asked loudly over the muted mumbling of Sam and Castiel. “Hey, you can’t do that thing,” he waved a hand in front of Jack’s wide, pleading stare. “You can’t turn on the puppy eyes, that’s cheating! Tell him Sam!”

Sam handed Castiel a napkin with great flourish and the angel carefully wiped his mouth before speaking. “I like the white, not red onions in this one,” he pointed at Dean’s hamburger. “There’s more of a bit and it contrasts well with the…” his nose curled up a little “--cayenne pepper in the patty. But then the grated onion in this patty--” the finger switched to Jack’s patty “--brings out the spiciness even more.”

“You weren’t supposed to tell him what was in them,” Dean pointed a finger accusingly at Sam who held up his hands defensively.

“I didn’t! He’s just--wait, you can really taste all that?”

Castiel shrugged. “I think you should have used black pepper and not the black and white mix,” he nodded towards Dean’s burger. “But then you could also go easy on the Worcheshire sauce, Jack.” He cleared his throat, putting on a facade of severity. “I mean, Contestant A.”

“Ah. We are engaged in another round of critical consumption?” Serafiel entered the main room with her hands in her pockets, green eyes sparkling with curiosity. “What is the verdict, brother?”

Two months had passed since Chuck’s unmaking at the hands of his sister. Amara had disappeared to deliver the remaining traces of him to the Empty and had since returned only once to check in with the team. “There is damage everywhere in the universe from my brother’s actions,” she told them. “I want to try and see what I can fix.” 

“Will we see you again?” Jack had spoken up quietly from his end of the table.

Amara had smiled with gentle radiance. “You only need to call.”

Serafiel had chosen to stay with them, or more specifically, with Castiel. Since the loss of his grace she had practically fused herself to his side. For the first week she hovered in front of or behind him at every step, pointing out the potential dangers that could end his newly mortal life; from the height of the staircase to the wetness of the bathroom floor to the glass of a window that could shatter to mouthfuls of food swallowed too quickly.

“I’m not going to die,” Castiel told her one night when she resumed her faithful position at his bedside.

“You are. Castiel, I am watching you die every moment of every day.” She grabbed his hand, her grip turning her fingertips white. “Do you not understand that you are going to expire long before I do? Even now I am witnessing your cells decline.”

“Sara.” He sat up slowly and wrapped his other hand around hers. “I’ve watched Sam and Dean die for years now. Sometimes more definitively than other times. You never forget how short their lives are compared to what we--to what you are,” he corrected himself. “But you can’t let that fear drive you. You have to appreciate the moments right now and the knowledge that even when they’re gone those memories will live on. That’s a kind of eternity no one can take away from you.”

It took another two weeks for Serafiel to let Castiel join the boys on hunts without her acting as sword and shield.

“Cas told me once that it’s not about how long a life lasts, but that you got to know that person at all. That you got to love them,” Jack told Serafiel one day when they were the only ones still awake in the bunker. They sat at the kitchen table, Serafiel watching Jack munching through a bowl of cornflakes while she nursed her own cup of coffee.

“He seems to ascribe privilege to this pain,” she noted glumly. “Did he also order you not to heal him anymore? In order to strengthen his mortal immune system?”

“Yeah, Dean said to save it for when he really needs it or he won’t survive the first cold he gets.”

“But--this is not--do you not feel him slipping away? Like a rope burning your fingers as it escapes?”

Jack put his spoon down. “You too? I feel it. Every time Sam and Dean put themselves in danger, every time Cas goes out of the house, and--it’s always there. I know Cas doesn’t like it when I’m worried about him so I try not to say anything.”

“This deception--” Serafiel wrapped her fingers around the warmth of the coffee mug “--it helps?”

“Yeah, I think so. Also I try to do other things to enjoy the time we have now, like cooking food for him. It’s always fun to see him try new flavors he could never taste before.”

“Like the program we watched of individuals vying for approval by those who critically consume their edible works?”

The next day Jack proposed the first cooking competition to an enthusiastic response by all. Sometimes it was between Sam and Dean, or Dean and Jack, or even Sam and Serafiel, who never tasted what she cooked but could follow complex recipes with startling precision. In between hunts and training they made a point of having at least one cooking event a week, because as Dean said, “you have a lifetime of terrible American cuisine to catch up on.”

Now Jack stood breathlessly waiting as Castiel shifted his eyes over both plates before landing on his.

“We have a winner,” Sam intoned dramatically and Dean threw up his hands in defeat.

“You’re biased towards the kid, Cas, this is frigging impossible.” He leaned over and swiped his own burger from the plate, munching down into it with gusto.

Castiel furrowed his brow a little and stood up, leaning towards Dean with voice lowered. “Is there really cayenne pepper in yours?”

“Yeah, thash my winning ingwedient,” he mumbled through a mouthful of burger.

“I didn’t know I could taste that,” the angel said almost to himself. For a while after he’d cut out his grace he thought that there could be traces left, residual remains that could congeal together to start regrowing. But as the days passed and he bled and was parched and fatigued the same as and even more than Sam and Dean he let go of the thin kite line of hope he had been holding on to.

A few days later during a vampire hunt Castiel found himself wishing he still had a finger wrapped around that blissful notion of recurring grace. Blood was pouring from a gaping would in his stomach and all he could think of was that he was dying again. 

Dying felt warm and thick between his fingers. He remembered that.

Dean propped him up against the wall, peering into his eyes and slapping his face with repeated echoes of his name.

“Cas!” Sam came running over with a box that he shoved into Dean’s hands. “Stitch him up, I’ll go after the runner.” 

“Hey, hey, look at me, buddy.” Dean cupped his face in both hands and waited until Castiel blinked in response. “It’s not that bad, don’t worry. Just let me take care of this and stay awake, okay?”

Once his head lobbed forward in a nod Dean reached into his jacket and pulled out a flask. “Go ahead and holler if you need to,” he grunted apologetically before pouring alcohol over the wound. “This is gonna sting like a bitch.”

Castiel felt his muscles kick as the alcohol soaked into the raw flesh, but the pain glazed over him like a muted film. He studied the needle as it moved in and out of his skin, forming a neat row of black lines across his flesh. Blood oozed out from between the cracks and for a moment he thought that the red droplets were glowing with a faint hue of blue. Then the neon light bulbs of the warehouse flickered above him and he closed his eyes in defeat.

Sometimes he dreamed about his grace, the way it sang through the rhythm of his veins or how the colors of his feathers harmonized with it. He could almost feel the static of it skipping through his fingertips and he would reach to close his hand around the pulsing energy, only to wake up and find himself holding nothing.

His eyelids drooped as his back pressed into the warehouse wall. He let his mind wander to envision an entire army of sparks invading the decaying cells under his skin.

When he opened his eyes to a frantically shouting Dean he dimly registered the scratches littering Dean’s arms and face. His fingers moved by instinct, pressing against his forehead.

Dean stilled under his touch. “Cas,” he started, gently pulling his hand off. “Cas, you can’t-”

“I forgot,” he mumbled, succumbing to the collapse of his body. He felt himself land on something sturdy, something with arms that circled around him and rubbed feeling back into his bones. “M’sorry.”

“It’s okay.” A voice like Sam’s floated from somewhere above and together the words of the brothers gathered to halo him in an aurora of warmth. It didn’t glow the way his grace used to, but it felt like home. And that was enough.

In the following days Castiel found himself often feeling for the scar that now ran under his ribs. Jack offered to heal it when they came back that first day but he refused. He needed to keep this. The scar on his throat had been healed by Serafiel but this one he could keep; he could wear as both a memorial to everything he’d lost and a badge commemorating everything he still had.

* * *

After the third month Serafiel finally decided to leave. Castiel had been encouraging her to take this step for several weeks now; he could see her curiosity building about the world outside, cities with towering skyscrapers and farms with young animals and rivers that froze and forests that whispered. And _people_. Whenever she accompanied them on hunts she would stop to stare at playgrounds and linger in diners and take long detours through the mall just to watch the human interaction around her. Every moment fascinated her. Castiel knew that she stayed to protect him, but he wanted her to be able to experience the full extent of her free will and life outside of the confines she had been forced to yield to as an angel.  He wanted her to be able to know what it was like to live without having a mission. 

Together with the boys he had been working to bring her to that place of realization. Dean taught her how to drive and Sam explained practical tips about money and expenses whenever the opportunity arose. Castiel knew that she would only ever leave if she felt confident and capable to handle the intricacies of life. “Sara was a strategist in Heaven,” he explained to the boys. “She’ll never set out to do anything she isn’t completely sure of it’s success.”

It was a windy day in October when Serafiel packed her small bag into the back of one of the cars from the bunker garage. She was still wearing the long gray coat she had on when they first met her in Heaven but Sam had suggested she bring an extra change of clothes or two, in case she found a situation where she needed to change.

“Like if you meet a cute guy or girl and wanna dress up a bit,” Dean said as he looked under the hood of the car and tightened a few things just to be sure. “Don’t call Cas for dating advice, you gotta talk to me or Sam about that.” He thought for a minute and added, “Or maybe it’s better if you call Jody for that.”

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam elbowed him in the arm. “Do you have all those contacts saved in your phone? Jody, Donna, Garth, Bobby, Charlie, Eileen, they’d all love for you to drop by, just give them a call if you’re in town.”

Serafiel nodded, and then stopped, a worried crinkle creasing her forehead. “How should I introduce myself to them? Would they be willing to accommodate a stranger who--”

“Tell them you’re my sister.” Castiel appeared in the doorway of the bunker with Jack beside him. He stepped out, tucking his hands into his pockets and drawing his shoulders together. The sun warmed his cheeks and he tilted his chin up to drink a little more of the light. Even after all these months he still found himself reaching for the natural heat of sun and flame; the strands of warmth seeping into his skin helped lessen the cold vacancy in his chest. It quieted it, if not erased it.

Jack bounded up to Serafiel and held out a square box to her proudly. “We got you a present,” he beamed. “Well, I wanted you to keep watching that show so we can talk about it when you call and Sam said it would be good for you to have one if you want to research the cities you stop by in.”

Taking the laptop box in both hands Serafiel held it ceremonially for a moment before wrapping her arms around it. “I will bestow as much love on this device as the love you have shown by giving it to me,” she announced, pressing her cheek to the cardboard corner.

“Don’t forget to keep it charged,” Dean piped up as he put the car hood down. “Sam--”

“Yeah, there’s a whole box of different chargers in the front seat and a few spares scattered throughout the car. I got her covered,” his brother grinned.

Castiel waited for the others to finish their rounds of hugs and goodbyes. He stood to the side, watching how Serafiel smiled at each embrace with unabashed pride and honor, like she was receiving a cherished gift. She was still getting used to being part of a family that didn’t consist of rules and punishment, and her delight at every small act of tenderness and appreciation never seemed to fade.

Eventually she came over and stood in front of him, shuffling her feet almost nervously.

There was too much weighing on his tongue and the first thing that rolled loose was “I’m sorry.”

She looked at him in wonder.

“You didn’t want to be the last angel,” he went on hurriedly. “I know you didn’t want the burden of that loneliness.” It was an apology he had delayed for long as he could; he didn’t want them to have to face the reality that she was the last of their kind. Jack would always be in a category of his own to her; but Serafiel was now fated to live with the history and memories of millenium for years, eons maybe, never having another to share the secrets of the celestial with.

“Castiel.” She moved closer and then dropped her head down, pressing her forehead against his collarbone. It was the gesture they used to make as fledglings; the closest they got to affection was when they would lean their forehead against another angel to catch a second of rest between sparring and training. He remembered how he would push his forehead against Balthazar, hiding the blood in his mouth after being defeated by Zachariah. Or how Samandriel would lean close for support when his wing had taken a beating.

“Because of you, Castiel, I know I will never be alone.” Her breath hitched and she closed a fist over his heart. “You are--” she straightened up, her lips trembling.

Serafiel opened her hand, pressing it against the rise and fall of his chest. “You are an angel, Castiel,” she said, tears shining between the strands of her hair blowing across her face. “Now and forever.”

A white strand of grace pulsed from her palm and Castiel thought he felt a thrill of electricity rush through his blood to meet it. Long after he had wrapped his arms around her, long after Jack and the boys had gone for a second round of goodbye hugs, long after the bumper end of the blue car disappeared down the road, Castiel was still trying to figure out why he sensed the familiar spark snaking under his veins.

Maybe it was just the adrenaline of emotion wearing off.

Maybe it was exhaustion seeping into his bones.

He hadn’t realized he’d been standing rigidly in place until Jack put a hand on his arm. “Cas?”

The spark resurfaced, a ripple forgotten by the water. He was standing in the shade and yet he felt a sizzling surge filling the corners of his chest. His eyelids fell shut as he searched deeper, or so he told himself; he was afraid if he opened his eyes what could only be a memory of grace would disappear forever.

And then Jack called his name again, this time in a voice brimming with incredulous wonder.  _ “Cas?” _

Gold fluttered from Jack’s fingers around his wrist and Castiel opened his eyes to the blue of sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title "[See You Again (Piano Version)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLbG1HmfBIk)" by Charlie Puth.
> 
> And that's the curtain call! Maybe someday I'll write a little one-shot of Serafiel meeting the Wayward Sisters :)
> 
> I'm going to have a little Christmas one-shot up next week, and I'm also working on another longer fic, a 20+ chapter story set in s12 and it's much darker in tone than this one. I should be able to start posting it in January, so stayed tuned!
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](https://angelfishofthelord.tumblr.com/) for more updates or just to chat!


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